Demon Lover
by MishGothika
Summary: Ever since moving to Fairwick to take up a teaching post at a local college, Tori has vivid,erotic dreams about a woman made of moonlight and shadows. Dreams she begins to fear as well as anticipate . . . AU. OOC.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Victorious is not mine never will be but i do enjoy using 'dem characters ;) anyway the idea comes from Carol Goodman**

**The Dark Stranger**

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Best keep your door locked, Miss.

The housekeeper's words came back to me as I readied myself for bed. It seemed a strange warning in a house as isolated as Lion's Keep where our only neighbors were sea and heath. Had there been trouble with one of the servants-perhaps with that impertinent groom with the roving eyes? Or could it be the Master that Mrs. Valentine was worried about? Haughty, remote Beck Oliver, who had looked down at me from his horse with such icy condescension-a cold look which had paradoxically lit a spit of fire from my toes to the roots of my hair. Surely not. The great Beck Oliver wouldn't deign to bother a lowly governess such as myself.

I locked the door all the same, but let the windows open as it was a warm night and the breeze coming off the ocean felt deliciously cool as I slid between the crisp lavender-scented sheets. I blew out my candle… and immediately noticed something odd. There was a crack of light at the bottom of the door. Had Mrs. Valentine left a candle burning in the hallway for my benefit? If so, I ought tell her it wasn't necessary.

I threw the sheets off and swung my legs over the side of the bed, preparing to go investigate, but froze before my toes touched the floor. The bar of light at the bottom of the door had been split in two by a shadow as if someone were standing there. As I stared at the door, seeking some other explanation, the brass knob silently began to turn. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. My throat was frozen with fear, as were my limbs, powerless to run from whoever was at the door. All I could do was watch as the knob turned… and stopped.

The door didn't open. It was locked. The knob paused there as If whoever was turning it was deciding what to do next. Would he break the door down? Would he force his way in and then… what then?

But he must have decided that breaking down the door would make too much noise. The knob silently revolved back. The shadow disappeared from beneath the door and the light slowly faded.

I let out a shaky breath, my limbs reduced to quivering jelly now that the moment of crisis was over. Should I go find Mrs. Valentine and tell her what happened? But tell her what? That I had seen a light? A shadow? A turning knob?

Already I mistrusted the evidence of my own senses and I had no wish to look an hysterical child on my first day of service.

So I crept back into bed, pulling the sheets over me, but kept my eyes on the door. What if he had gone to retrieve a key? I lay like that ridged beneath the crisp sheets, all my attention riveted to the door, for I don't know how long, I was sure I would not sleep, but it had been a long day of weary travel and learning new faces and duties, and the sound of the waves crashing on the shore below the cliff and the scent of saltwater mingled with honeysuckle from the garden were hypnotically soothing…

I must have drifted off cause when I came to the room was bright with light. I startled awake, thinking the light in the crack below the door had seeped into the room, but then I saw that the light came not from the door, but from the open window. Moonlight spilled in, white as cream soaking the sheets and my nightgown. . . I was wet, too , from the heat . . . drenching the whole room except for a pillar of shadow that stood at the window . . .

A pillar shaped like a woman.

For the second time that night I opened my mouth to scream, but my throat was frozen as if the moonlight was a carapace of ice. I could not see the woman's features, but I knew it not to be Mrs. Valentine. I did not recognize that arrogant bearing,tall,big breast and slim agility of her hips as she moved forward . . .

She was moving forward, slowly , gliding across the floor so as not to make a sound. She must think I was still asleep. I must let her go on thinking I was asleep. If she knew I was awake she might become violent , even though I did not know who this shadow lady was I could sense I should not get on the wrong side of her

I clenched my eyes shut. Perhaps she had only come to look at me, perhaps I could bear it if she only came to look . . .

I felt a tug on the sheet that lay over me, a minute movement as if the breeze had lifted it, but then it began to slide down, dragging across my breasts, tugging the placket of my nightgown . . . which I'd left unbuttoned because of the warmth of the night. The cool air tickled my bare skin and to acute embarrassment I felt my nipples harden beneath the thin cloth. I could feel her eyes on me, a prickling sensation that made the hairs on my lags stand up . . . my bare legs! My nightgown had ridden up around my hips in my sleep. Cool air licked at my thighs, my calves, and finally, as the sheet slipped away in a soft swoosh that sounded like running water, my toes. I lay, still barely daring to breathe, alert for the slightest sound or movement. If she touched me I would scream. I'd have to. But nothing happened. The breeze played across my skin, teasing the bare places-my breast, the crook of my arm, the inside thigh. At last I couldn't bear it- I risked a peek through slitted eyes . . .and saw nothing. The room was empty.

Had I imagined the shadow at the window? Perhaps I'd tossed the sheets off myself . . .but then I felt something touch the sole of my foot. A breeze warmer than the outside air, warm and moist as breath. The shadow was still there, at the foot of my bed crouched by my feet, but whether human or dream I could no longer say. The pull it had on me seemed otherworldly. Why else would I lie silent as it breathed on my calf, its breath hot and wet? Why else would I stir only to widen my legs as its breath traveled up my leg? Why else would I close my eyes and give myself over to its rough warmth lapping inch by inch up my thigh? Like a wave lapping at the shore, leaving wet sand as it retreats, and traveling a little further each time it returns. Insinuating itself into the cracks and crevice, wearing away the stony shore. I felt my own stoniness wear away as the warm tongue found its way into my very center and then licked deeper into the depths I didn't know I had . . .deep underwater caverns where the surf rushed and boiled, retreated, lapped again, and filled me. Retreated, lapped again, filled me. I was riding the waves now, born higher and higher. The room was filled with the smell of salt and the roar of the ocean . . . and then the wave dashed me down to the strand.

I opened my eyes and watched the shadow slip away like a retreating tide leaving me wet and spent as a woman drowned. I knew at last what had happened to me. I'd been visited not by Mr. Oliver or Mrs. Valentine – or any other mortal – but by a succubus. The demon lover of myth.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter2

**Disclaimer:No , just no**

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"So Professor Vega , can you tell me how you first became interested in the sex lives of demon lovers?"

The question was a bit jarring, coming as it did from a silver-chignoned matron in pearls and a pink tweed Chanel suit. But I'd gotten used to questions like these. All because I wrote a book _Sex Lives Of Demon Lovers_. I'd been on a round of readings, lectures and, now job interviews, that focused on the sex in the title. I had feeling though that Elizabeth Book, as chair of Fairwick College's folklore department, might genuinely be more interested in the demon lovers of the title.

This is where I find myself today, at the folklore department. It certainly wasn't THE COLLEGE, enrollment 1600 students, 120 full-time faculty, 30 part-time

'We pride ourselves on our teacher-to-student ratio'Dr. Book had gushed earlier.

Even the town Fairwick… a great place if your hobbies were snowshoeing and ice fishing, but not if you're wanting to catch the O'Keeffe show at the Whitney, shopping at Barneys, and dining out at the new Bobby Flay restaurant.

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Don't get me wrong its not like I didn't have other college's interview me , no its that this is the only one that had a folklore department and professors who were interested in something other than the class I taught on vampires. Not all of them were fans. An American history professor named Andre Harris- a burly guy with his shirt rolled up to show off his muscular forearms- had asked me if I didn't think that my craze for vampire books were a bit trashy.

"I teach Byron, Coleridge and Brontes in my classes," I replied, returning his condescending smile. "I'd hardly call their work trash."

What I didn't mention was that in my class we also tend to watch episodes of True Blood and the Dracula series. Or that my interests in demon lovers was not only scholarly.

He then continued to ask which one of my parents decided on my name. I told him that it was my mother who named me. What I didn't mention was that my parents had both died in a plane crash when I was 12. Or that I remembered little of my parents. Or that throughout my teens I'd been haunted by strange dreams of a shadowy figure.

And no way was I going to tell him why I started my research and that I thought if I trace old stories back to their origin I could figure out why I was having these strange dreams. Instead of becoming clearer though I couldn't find a clue as to why I was having the dreams after their death. I'd become a very competent researcher, earned a doctorate, received awards for my thesis, and published a book. The dreams ended then, as id I'd exorcised them with all that research and analysis, which was the point right?

* * *

'You're just what we're looking for," Elizabeth Book said

was she actually offering me a job here and now? The other places always waited seemingly 10 days to respond , I don't know if her approach is refreshing of a little desperate.

"So I can start next week then?" yeah I know now I seem desperate. She gave me the most heart warming smile ever and while we continued talking about what I would be doing at the college and my classes. After I left the building I decide I'd walk to the place I'm staying at. Gives me a chance to explore the area get to know my way around. I was staying the Hart Brake Inn. As I continued walking I could see a blue Victorian house from over here. The opposite side if the road where the house was , was boarded by massive pine trees , the beginning of a huge track of protected state forest. I paused for a moment at the edge of a narrow trail, peering into the shadows. Even though the day was bright the woods were dark. Vines looped from tree to tree, filling every crevice and twisting into curious shapes. This is where all the stories start, I thought, on the edge of a dark forest. Because everyone knows the forest is where fairies and demons live.

A wind came up and blew out of the woods towards me, carrying with it the chill scent of pine needles, damp earth and something sweet. Honeysuckle? Peering closer, I saw that the shadowy woods were indeed stained with white and yellow flowers. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. The breeze curled around me, tickling the damp at the back of my neck and lifting the ends of my long hair like a hand caressing me. The sensation reminded me of the dreams I'd had when I was younger. The shadow would appear at the end of my bed. The room would fill with the scent of honeysuckle and salt. I'd hear the ocean and be filled with an inchoate longing.

The psychiatrist my Aunt had sent me to said the dreams were an experience of grief for my parents, but I'd always found that hard to believe. The feelings I'd had for the shadow woman were not psychotic…

Now the invisible hand tugged at me and I stepped forward, off the pavement and onto the dirt path. The heels of my boots sank into the soft, loamy soil.

I opened my eyes, stumbling, as if walking out of a dream and started to walk away . . . that's when I saw the house that was hidden from the road by the dense, overgrown hedge. Even without the hedge the house would be pretty hard to see cause it blended in so well with its surroundings. It was a Queen Anne Victorian, the paint was peeling in so many places it resembled a cleverly camouflaged butterfly. The roof was slate and furred with moss. The honeysuckle from the forest had encroached over the porch railings-or more likely the honeysuckle from the house had spread over to the forest. I stepped a few feet closer and a breeze stirred a loose vine over the door. It waved to me as though it were calling me to come closer.

I looked around to see if there were any signs of someone living there, but the driveway was empty, the windows were shut. Shut a pretty house to be deserted, as I got closer I saw a carving of a woman's face, a pagan goddess I thought, her abundant flowing hair. I'd seen a face like it before somewhere . . . perhaps in a book on forest deities . . . the same face appeared in the stained glass fanlight above the front door

Startled, I realized I had come all the way up the stairs and was standing at the front door, my hand on the doorknob. What was I thinking? Even if no one lived here it was still private property.

I turned to leave. The wind picked up, lifting the green pollen from the porch floor and blowing it into little funnels around my feet as I hurried down the steps, which groaned under my boot heels. A branched snagged onto my arm and it frightened me so much I stumbled but caught my balance. When I finally reached the hedge I turned around to look back at the house. It gave one more sigh as the wind stopped, its clipboard walls moaning as if sorry to see me go.

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**AN: Bloop :P**


	3. Chapter 3

** Disclaimer:nope.**

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"Who owns the house across the street?" I asked later when having tea with Diana Hart on the porch. The owner of Hart Brake Inn. A slim copiously freckled woman in her fifties, shifted her wicker rocker.

"What house?" she asked, her large brown eyes widening. She wore her chestnut brown hair so shortly cropped that it accentuated the size of her eyes.

I pointed across the street even though the house wasn't visible. "The one behind the overgrown hedge. A pretty yellow Queen Anne with green trim. It has a very unusual stained glass fanlight over the front door."

"You went up to the door?" Diana asked, setting down her delicate china cup in its matching saucer. Milky tea sloshed over the brim.

"The house looked empty . . .' I started to explain.

"Oh yes, no one's lived in there for more than twenty years. Not since Erwin Sikowitz's cousin died."

"Erwin Sikowitz, the crazy teacher?" I asked.

"Oh you've heard of him?"

"Yes." I don't know why I felt the need to nod as well.

"He built the house for his wife Eugenia and planted honeysuckle all around it cause she loved the smell of it. Sadly she died months after they moved into the house. That's when his cousin Jade West had moved into the house with him. He left the house to her when he died and she stayed there until she left to no one knows where. She stayed there 5 years after Erwin's death and then just left."

"Jade never married?"

"Oh no!" Diana widened her eyes then looked down, noticing she had spilled some of her tea. "Jade was a sweet girl but kept to herself and when she grew out of her teens she really just stayed in that house doing God knows what. Really the perfect person to live in honeysuckle house."

"Why's that?" I asked.

"Just that living alone on the edge of the woods might scare some people." She said pouring herself some more tea, she offered to refill my cup but I politely refused I was more of a coffee person anyway.

"But Jade lived there on her own." I pointed out.

"Yes," Diana conceded, "but Jade liked scaring herself and others."

"Hmm, I'd love to see the house. Do you know who owns it now?"

"Sinjin Van Cleef of Van Cleef Realty hold the key, sees to repairs, and occasionally shows it to a house hunters. A lovely gay couple from the city looked at it last year and almost bought it ,they would have been perfect for it but changed their minds."

"So Cleef could show it to me If I wanted to see it?"

Diana looked up from her tea and blinked her long dark lashes. "Are you thinking of buying it?"

I began to protest, but I stopped. Really I only wanted to see the house out of curiosity, but if I told her that then she probably wouldn't get this Van Cleef to show it to me.

"Well since I got the teaching job this morning I might as well start looking for places, and I'm tired of living in apartments." The last part was at least true. My studio apartment in L.A was the size of a closet.

Diana was studying me carefully. For a moment I thought she'd caught me in a lie. But then it turned out it wasn't at all. "I'll call Sinjin and ask him to come by tomorrow morning to show you the house. I'm not sure if Honeysuckle House would be right for you," she said. "but I think you might be perfect for _it_."

* * *

After having tea with Diana and of her scones and clotted cream I decided that although I was to full for a run. I'd better take a long walk to burn off the scones and cream. I walked down towards the Main Street, past Victorian houses, some loving restored and others in various stages of disintegration or restoration. As I neared the Main Street the houses grew larger, but also shabbier. Clearly the town of Fairwick had enjoyed a time of prosperity at the end of the 19th century.

Main Street itself was sad and dreary. Half the storefronts were abandoned. One shop did stand out though a coffee place called Fair Grounds. I bought a soy latte and a sandwich in case I got hungry later.

Walking back uphill to the Inn I passed Van Cleef Realty. Looking at the listings pasted onto the window I saw that the houses in the town were going for even less than I'd imagined. For the price of a one-bedroom apartment in L.A I could get a five-bedroom Victorian here. I wondered what Honeysuckle House would sell for.

It started to drizzle then, so I walked faster up the hill. Its wasn't really pouring rain so I stopped on the other side of the road and peered through the hedges at Honeysuckle House. The face on the pediment seemed to look back at me. The raindrops streaming down its cheeks looked unnervingly like tears. Suddenly the rain began to fall harder. I crossed the street and sprinted up to the steps to the porch, stopping to shake the rain out of my hair and of my jacket. So that I wouldn't shed water all over Diana's furniture. A thump on the wooden steps behind me made me turn around, but no one was there. Nothing was there but the rain. For a moment I saw a shape in the falling water-a face, as if just behind the watery veil, a face I knew, but from where? Before I could place it the face was gone, blown away in a gust of wind. Only then did I recall where I'd seen that face. It was carved into the pediment of Honeysuckle House.

* * *

It was an afterimage I told myself later when I was lying in the too-soft four-poster bed, listening to the rain that hadn't let up all evening. I stared at the face so hard at the house that I'd fashioned it out of falling rain. A face after all, was the easiest pattern to find in random shapes. And that face –round, eyes that seemed to have life, aquiline nose and full lips- was particularly striking. So striking that I'd even imagined for a moment that it was the face of the shadow lady from my adolescent dreams, but that was impossible because I'd never seen her face. She always stood at the edge of the darkness… inches from the moonlight that would have revealed her face. I could almost see her now, taking shape behind the veils of my eyelids instead of the scrim of rainwater.

As I began to drift off my last thought was that I should get up and close the window to keep the rain from coming in . . . but I was already too far gone to move.

I couldn't move. I should get up and close the window but I couldn't move an inch. There was a weight settled on my chest, pinning me to the bed, pushing me deep into the soft mattress, which surrounded me in an enveloping embrace.

I couldn't move a muscle or draw in a breath. Even my eyelids were pasted shut. I struggled to open them against the light.

Light?

The rain had stopped. Instead of wet gusts of air, moonlight streamed through the windows. It was the moonlight that had pinned me down to the bed. I could see it spilling across the wide pine planks, a white shaft carrying on its back the shadows of tree branches that quivered in the breeze, trembling to reach me. I recalled the tangled trees and shrubs surrounding Honeysuckle House and had the confused impression that the moonlight was coming from _there_. There was something wrong with that idea, but I was too tired to figure it out and the moonlight was so bright I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. They fluttered shut and I saw _her_. The shadow lady from my teenage dreams. With her came the scent of honeysuckle and salt air I always remembered from those dreams and the longing I'd always felt. She stood on the threshold between shadow and moonlight, where she always hesitated . . .

She stepped forward into the moonlight. It was _her, _the lady from the house across the way. I forced my eyes open and she was still there, hovering above me, looking down at me, her face thrown into the shadow by the moonlight cascading over her back like a silver cape. I could only see the places the moonlight touched: the plane of one cheekbone as her head tilted sideways, locks of hair falling over the blade of her shoulder. Each part of her took shape and weight as the moonlight touched it. It was as if she were made from shadow and the moonlight was a knife sculpting her into being, each stroke of the knife giving her form . . .and weight.

The moonlight sculpted a rib and I felt her chest press down onto mine, it rounded a hip and it settled onto my pelvis, it carved the length of a leg and it pressed against the length of my legs.

I gasped . . . or tried to. My mouth opened, but I couldn't draw breath because of the weight on my chest. Her lips, pearly wet, parted and blew into my mouth. My lungs expanded beneath her weight. When I exhaled she sucked in my breath and her weight changed from cold marble to warm living flesh. Moving flesh. I felt her chest rise and lower against mine, felt her hips grind into mine, her legs parted mine and she settled down between my legs and rocked against me bringing her lips close to mine only to suck in my breath and never kiss me. I couldn't tell what was her wetness and what was mine. We rocked to the rhythm of the ocean until I lost all sense of what was me and what was her, until we were the wave cresting, the crumbling onto the flat hard sand.

Then I lay panting like a drowning person, slicked in sweat, alone on the bed in a pool of liquid moonlight.

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**AN: See what I did at the beginning of this chapter ScottyBgood ? XD he he .**

**Just thought I should mention that while writing the last bit of this chapter i was listening to Closer and Deep by Nine Inch Nails lol … okay this awkward i'll go back to my little hole and stay silent**


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: If i owned Victorious this would be the story line...**

**Also thanks guys for the reviews they make me happy and to think I was piss scared of actually uploading a story , glad I decided to though =^.^= meow**

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I woke the next morning with the bone-melting contentment that follows a night of really good sex – quickly followed by a rush of shame at the realization that the sex had all been inside my own head. I had been embarrassed by the dreams I had as a teenager, but they'd never gone this far. She had never come that close to my face before or come with me- assuming she had- before. I never felt sensitive between my legs before . . .

I got up quickly, eager to clear the fuzzy from my head and bloodstream. I didn't have time to languish in erotic daydreams.

I wanted to get inside Honeysuckle House. I hadn't spent the whole night wallowing in X-rated fantasies. Sometime in the night I'd had an idea for an essay, maybe even something longer . . . I'd scribbled something in my notebook, which I always kept beside my bed. I looked at it now.

_The threshold_, I scrawled in great loopy scripts across a blank page, _between shadow and moonlight_. Now if I could only remember what that meant.

I decided to take a jog to clear my head. When I pulled open the curtain I was met with a fresh-washed blue sky. The hedge across the street sparkled in the sun.

I pulled on some sweatpants, T-shirt and sneakers. I padded downstairs as quietly as I could on the creaking wooden steps since it was 6:15. Breakfast was served at 8:30. I had plenty of time for a long run and shower.

While I stretched I thought of possible routes to take. The campus would be a logical way to take but I didn't want to run into Dr. Book in my jogging clothes. There was a dirt path here, I remembered, that went into the woods behind Honeysuckle House. That trail would do.

I crossed the street, slowing at the path entrance to adjust my eyes to the diminished light. I kept a slow pace so that I could watch the unfamiliar terrain to avoid tripping on roots or branches. The surface was fairly smooth, however, and pleasantly springy.

I noticed how good and clean mountain air felt moving in and out my lungs. I picked up the pace feeling that little endorphin kick in. What a great place to run!

If I lived in Honeysuckle House this trail would be right outside my door. I could run here every morning. But I wasn't going to live in Honeysuckle House. Where had that idea come from? What would I need with a big old house?

It would be nice to finally have enough room for my books and shoes. I laughed out loud at the idea. The woods echoed back the sound.

The honeysuckle shrubs that Sikowitz had planted around the house had spread over a mile into the woods! The whole house must smell of them. At night the breeze from the woods would blow through the open windows and fill the rooms with their scent.

At the thought of a bedroom filled with moonlight and honeysuckle, images from last night's dream came flooding back to me.

The shadow lady making love to me like a wave . . .

Of course the woman from my dream was a demon lover. The demon lover always came in dreams. One of its name was _mare, _from which we derived the word _nightmare,_ although what I'd experienced last night hadn't felt anything like a nightmare.

Why had the dreams come back now?

One moment I was mid stride, soaring free of the earth, the next I was flat on the ground, face in the dirt, the wind knocked out of me. I gulped for air, but the ground was pressing to hard to my chest, my mouth, my nose . . . dragging me into the darkness. I was sinking . . .

She was rising to meet me, emerging out of the darkness as if rising out of dark water. The face of the woman who had come to me last night.

She was _growing_, becoming more solid. As if to reward me for this insight she smiled. Her beautiful lips parted and came closer until they touched my lips and pushed them open. Her tongue flicked into my mouth – hot and wet. I felt myself go hot and wet between my legs where I was raw from last night, so overcome with _desire_ I felt myself sinking into the darkness . . . then she breathed into my mouth.

The air seared my lungs, but I gulped greedy mouthfuls of it wanting more of her.

I opened my eyes. I was lying on my back, looking up at a tangled canopy of honeysuckle vines. I was thinking dazedly, still panting from the erotic force of that kiss.

I pulled myself into a sitting position and checked for injury, my ankle felt a little tender, but otherwise I seemed remarkably unscathed. How had I fallen anyway? The ground was clear. Apparently I stumbled over my own two feet.

Abashed by own clumsiness – and the direction my imagination seemed to be taking. I stood up – too fast. My head spun. Maybe I'd hit it in the fall and I had a concussion. That would explain the hallucination.

I couldn't run back so I decided to slowly walk back to the Inn.

It was 8:30 when I got back to the road. I saw Honeysuckle House first. Its shutters and windows were open. White lace curtains billowed in and out of the open windows. The house looked it was breathing. The realtor must have come over early to air it out before showing it to me. I felt a pang of guilt at making her go to the trouble when I had no intention of buying it.

Or was it a pang of regret?

I should, by all rights, have been more determined than ever to get out of here after my mishap of the morning, but even thought I was sore and tired – and hungry – I also felt curiously elated. The fall had been painful – but that kiss! No one had ever kissed me like that. It made me feel . . . _alive. _

The smell of coffee, eggs and maple syrup coming from across the road nearly made me break into a run – but I restrained myself out of respect for my sore muscles.

Diana's voice called from the kitchen as soon as I opened the front door. "Is that you, Tori?" she came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a red and white checked tea cloth. She was wearing a sweatshirt that read: SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED. " I was afraid you'd forgotten the breakfast time . . ." she faltered to stop when she saw me. "Oh my' you look like you had a fall. Are you all right? Do you need some ice?"

"I'm fine," I said. "I went running in the woods . . ."

"In the woods," the question came from someone who had followed Diana out of the kitchen – a slim tall man who looked in his early 30ties with strawberry blonde hair.

"Oh Sinjin, you were right! She did go running in the woods . . . oh sorry!" Diana waved her hands between me and the man by way of making introductions. "Tori Vega, Sinjin Van Cleef of Van Cleef Realty. He came to show you the house and said he thought he saw you head into the woods earlier, those wood can be tricky you know."

"The woods were fine. I was clumsy. Do I have time for a quick shower before breakfast?"

"Of course!" Diana exclaimed. I had a feeling that if I asked her to serve breakfast on the roof she would have tried to accommodate me.

"I'll be quick," I promised.

I hobbled up the stairs and into the shower. The water helped with the soreness. I took two Advil as well, dressed in a light cotton dress and sandals, twisted my wet hair in a sloppy bun and hurried downstairs.

* * *

The two of them were sitting at the dinning room table together whispering. A floorboard creaked under my foot as I came into the room and Diana lifted her head, her large brown eyes looking startled.

"There you are, sit and I'll go get your breakfast, Sinjin will keep you company."

I didn't see why I needed company, but I smiled sociably at the realtor and sat down across from him. He poured coffee into my cup and offered milk and sugar which I took but I didn't use the milk.

Next thing I knew he pulled out a glossy decorative folder that he laid out in front me. " I brought a couple of other listings for you."

I should have realized that asking a realtor to show one house in the current housing market was like asking an alcoholic to have an aperitif.

"The one across the street is striking . . ."

"Oh yes, Honeysuckle House is one of our grandest old Victorians. Erwin spared no expense in building the house for his wife."

"It's a shame she didn't live to enjoy it for long. And his cousin left the house." I said, taking a sip from my coffee.

"Jade? Yes, it was a shame," he replied, narrowing his eyes at me.

When Diana came back and handed me my breakfast I just sat there quietly eating while they spoke.

When I was finished Diana and Sinjin were up and heading out of the house before I could rise from the table. I really was sore now and I could only move slowly. They turned and noticed my slow moment.

"I could always show you the house later" Sinjin said.

"No I'm fine, plus you've already gone to the trouble of opening all the windows."

Sinjin stared at me, "What are you talking about?" he asked. " I didn't open any windows."

After that was said the two older people were already across the street at the edge of the hedge, staring up at the house.

"Is everything okay?" I asked. They were looking at the house as if it were on fire.

"Oh yes," Sinjin answered. "I forgot that I told Robbie, the handyman to come over and air the place out. Diana?" he turned deliberately to the woman and spoke slowly. "Perhaps you'd do me a favor and make the phone call we talked about earlier."

Diana squeezed the realtor's arm. "I'll be across the street."

* * *

The wooden face in the pediment gleamed and glowed like the complexion of a young person who'd had a good night's sleep. When Sinjin opened the door there was no moldy or mousy odor. Instead the air the house huffed out at us smelled like honeysuckle.

He held the door open and I stepped through first, into a wide foyer. Light from the stained glass fanlight spilled onto the polished wood floor like a scattering of rose petals strewn for our arrival.

"The floors are oak," Sinjin said, closing the door behind us. " As well as the banister." He ran his hand over a carved newel post at the foot of a wide flight of stairs. " There are pocket doors leading into both parlors." She opened a double door, both sides sliding into the walls with a shooshing noise that echoed loudly in a big, empty house. A draft from the stairs moved at our backs as we entered the dim parlor. Sinjin turned a switch and a crystal chandelier sprung into sight high over our heads. The ceiling was 12 foot high.

I walked over to the fireplace and ran my hand over the intricately carved wood. A satyr's face stared out of the center roundel; a procession of Greek gods and goddesses adorned the top frieze.

"The mantelpiece depicts the wedding of Cupid and Psyche," Sinjin said in his tour guide voice. "The theme is repeated in the dining room frieze . . ." Sinjin had opened up another pocket door that led into a large octagonal room. Plaster figures paraded across the walls beneath swags of pine boughs and acorns. There were built in china cabinets in each corner.

"And here's the kitchen. I'm afraid it hasn't been modernized since the sixties . . ."

The "modernization" consisted of an Amana refrigerator and gas range, both in the same shade of green.

"Jade didn't really use this area much, she was a novelist just like yourself and spent most of her time in the library." He said as he led me through two more rooms , one a laundry room and the other a drab bedroom that looked like it was never used.

"The library?" I asked.

The realtor slid back the doors to expose the library. This room, which faced east, got the morning light. Streaming through a screen of shrubbery it turned the room a glassy green, like a forest glade, the room was lined with floor to ceiling built-in bookcases.

"Is this where Jade wrote?"

"No," Sinjin answered. "Her study was upstairs in the tower room off her bedroom."

A study and a library! In my old apartment I wrote at my kitchen table. I stored my books in the kitchen cabinets.

My musings were cut short by Sinjin turning around and walking past me.

"C'mon I'll show you upstairs" he said with the realtor smile.

We walked all the way back we came. "You wouldn't have to worry about a burglar sneaking up these steps," I said "They're like an alarm system."

Sinjin turned around on the second floor landing. "No you wouldn't have to worry bout any breaking in, the town is quite safe."

He showed me four small bedrooms and then she opened the last door at the end of the hallway. "The master bedroom," he announced.

Two large windows overlooked an overgrown garden and the mountains in the distance. The bed would go up against the west wall so you could lie in bed and look out at the mountains. At night you'd see the moon rise. There was a huge desk with lots of draws and a chair right next to it on the far end of the wall and two small bookcases next to it filled with what looked like books and a few journals.

Sinjin continued to show me the rest of the huge house including the attic that he said Jade used as a "spiritual" place.

I helped Sinjin lock up the house and as we were heading back across the street to the Inn he spoke up

"So I don't suppose you want to see any other houses do you?"

"No really." I laughed nervously I wasn't even looking to buy a house, am I a bad person for making him come all the way over here to show me a house out of curiosity?

We reached the Inn and Diana met us outside, there was iced tea on the porch table and she was holding a plate full of cookies "hi, I made some cookies and ice tea , thought we'd sit on the porch and chat." I swear Diana is going to make me fat.

I smiled and sat down while Sinjin and Diana conversed. I glanced across the street. I couldn't see the house but I could smell it – honeysuckle and salt air as if it stood on the cliff above the sea instead of on a street in a remote mountain town. It was the smell of my dreams. Not that that was the reason I had to do it.

I turned back to Sinjin. " I'm going to buy Honeysuckle House."

* * *

** AN: Okay so this the part where i apologize for the long chapter , sorry if it dragged on and you got bored? I'm not sure ? but i thought about stopping it just before they went to the house but that just seemed stupid and annoyed me so . . . yeah . you munchkins are awesome :) don't hate me**


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:Not a fuck**

* * *

After signing the papers for the house and getting the key from Sinjin. I decided to visit my unmentioned sister. Honestly I swear we're not related at all, when she turned 17 she left my aunts house and went to L.A and some one actually offered her an acting job and now she's making it big in Hollywood. To say she was unhappy about me buying a house in the middle of nowhere, without consulting her was an understatement.

If I'd believed in the pathetic fallacy – that the weather in the novel reflected the emotions of the heroine – I'd have had to suspect that my purchase of Honeysuckle House had indeed been dictated by a malevolent force. I drove up to Fairwick in a torrential rainstorm that threatened to blow my car off the highway. When I got to Fairwick all the houses on my street were dark. The power must be out. I thought, wondering how often _that _happened. I considered going to Hart Brake Inn and asking for a room or maybe even just a flashlight and candles – but when I drove up the front of Honeysuckle House I knew I couldn't wait any longer to claim it as my own. Even the wind seemed to be pushing me up the front steps – there was that fallacy again! – urging me to the front door. I glanced up at the fanlight, but the face was dark and brooding with no light shining through the stained glass. Like the lover in my dreams before the moonlight awakened her. I had a feeling that _she_ was somewhere in the shadowy house.

I touched the key to the keyhole. I felt a tug at my hand as the key leapt forward and slid smoothly into the lock.

_Damn! _I turned the key. The tumblers turned smoothly in the lock and the door opened silently, not at all like the creaking doors of Gothic romance. Nor was I greeted by cobwebs and a dank miasmas. The house smelled like fresh paint and varnish. A clean, practical smell that vanquished the ridiculous notion that I'd bought the house because of a dream.

As I closed the door I noted that the storm was clearing, letting in enough moonlight to make the face reflect on the foyer floor. The face of the pagan goddess elongated and distorted so that she seemed to be smirking.

I shivered at the thought . . . but also I was damp from the rain and tired. I needed a hot bath, assuming the water was hot, and a bed, assuming the bed I'd ordered had come and been set up.

* * *

I climbed up the stairs. I was afraid that the upstairs hallway would be dark but the moonlight had found its way here too, through the windows of the smaller bedrooms, the master bedroom door was closed.

I made my way down the hallway feeling peculiarly _watched._ I turned the knob of my bedroom door, but it wouldn't budge. I leaned my shoulder against the door, cursing softly under my breath. _Open up, damn it, I'm tired . . . _the door swung open so suddenly I stumbled into the room.

The bed.

Someone had made it up with crisp white sheets, plump pillows, and a lofty feather-filled duvet. All of it white in the moonlight. It looked like it was meant for a bride and not for sweaty me in my shorts and scruffy T-shirt.

I should take a bath, I thought, but I was suddenly too exhausted. I peeled off my clothes and walked towards the bed. I crawled into the white virginal bed, sinking into its deep, pillowy embrace and into an even deeper sleep.

But not for long.

Someone was tapping at the window. I got up and walked across the dark room towards the lightened window. Moonlight was banked up against the glass like water pressing against a dam, but it wasn't coming in. I was standing between shadow and moonlight, where she always waited for me. And someone was knocking. I walked closer to the window and saw that there was something metal hanging from the window frame, a round medallion with spokes like a wheel and three dangling keys. Although it was made of a dark metal it reminded me of a dream catcher.

Instantly a crack appeared in one of the windowpanes, splintering the glass into a million jagged shards. They fell to the floor at my feet and the moonlight rushed in with the wind – a wind that smelled like honeysuckle and salt – and circled around me like an angry riptide. It slammed me up against the window, my back hitting the glass and shattering the rest of the panes. The moonlight was so bright I was blinded. I closed my eyes against it, but it was so bright it was still there beneath my eyelids, still there pressing me up against the windowpane, a cold, surge pushed my hips onto the window ledge and spread my legs and then she pressed hard against my center with her pelvis . . .

I grasped the window frame for balance and cut my hand on broken glass. I gasped and my mouth filled up with saltwater. I tired to push back but that only made the surge come again . . . and again, sucking me down into the riptide.

I'd heard somewhere that if you're drowning you should relax and let the current take you. I did that now and the current turned warm and carried me down into the darkness where _she_ lived.

* * *

The sound of the moving truck in the driveway woke me up the next morning. I lay for a moment, sprawled in a tangle of sheets, trying to remember where I was. Hadn't I drowned?

As I scrambled into my discarded clothes from last, though, I noticed the broken glass on the floor and a long jagged cut on my hand. I gingerly approached the window and saw that amongst broken glass was the metal wind chime. I stared at it for a moment, recalling the violence of my dream, but there was a knock on the front door that startled me out of my reverie.

It didn't take long for the two men to unpack the contents of my apartment and the boxes from my storage unit. When they finished the house stilled looked empty. I threw myself into unpacking, figuring that the surest way to ward of melancholy was to make the house feel like my home. It would be fun, I told myself, to find odds and ends in antique stores to fill the house up.

After dinner, well pizza, I took a long overdue soak in the claw foot tub, pouring in the rose scented bath oil that had come in a welcome basket from Diana. Then I put on a loose nightshirt and started unpacking my files and office supplies into the desk in the tower office while sipping a glass of wine. It was fun opening up the draws of the desk. Jade sure kept weird stuff. I found a glossy black seedpod shaped like a horned goat's head, a china doll's head with one blue eye scratched out and draw filled with weird things in glass jars. Only one drawer was locked. I looked for a key, but couldn't find one.

I left all the objects where I found them and just added my collection of stones and shells.

* * *

I sat back and looked up meeting my own eyes in my reflection in the darkened windowpane. I tied my hair up in a loose knot for my bath, but tendrils had escaped and curled around my face. My nightshirt, I noticed was rather transparent. For a moment I imagined what I looked like to someone looking in from outside – a maiden trapped in a tower. I had started to laugh at the idea. Before long I'd be running in my diaphanous nightgown towards a cliff with a castle looming in the background.

A flicker of light caught my attention in the back garden. Although classes only started next week freshmen had started arriving for orientation and it wouldn't take them long to realize the woods was a good place to get high and drink.

I leaned forward. There was something on the lawn just at the edge of the woods, a white shape that swayed in the breeze. For a moment I was sure it was a girl about my age in a white shirt and black jeans looking up at my window. I could make out a pale face and bright blue eyes? . . . and then the eyes widened and spread, devouring the rest of her face – and then I saw it was an illusion. The white shape was a plume of mist rising from the ground and dispersing on the breeze.

Great, now I was becoming like one of those heroines of the books I wrote about, jumping at noises and imagining faces in the mist. Like the one I dreamt about last night. Only the dream hadn't been of the romantic lover. The flood of moonlight that had rushed into me had been an elemental force – urgent and impatient.

_**Because of how long you've waited for the shadow lover**__,_ a voice inside my head whispered, _**because of how long you've made her wait.**_

"That's ridiculous," I said aloud as I closed and locked the window.

It took me a long time to fall asleep that night. When I finally did the shadow lady slipped into my bed and wrapped herself around me, murmuring words that I couldn't understand into my ear. I could actually fell her warm breath. She was everywhere, like a warm bath with fingers and lips, sucking on my mouth, my nipples, and between my legs. As if she was feeding on me and growing stronger with every orgasm she gave me.

* * *

When I got to the campus I found out my office was on the top floor and there was no elevator. On my second trip hauling boxes up the steep, winding stairs a pair of brawny arms relieved me of my burden.

"You sound like you're going to expire of consumption at any moment." I recognized Andre's voice the history professor who had sneered at the inclusion of vampire books in my curriculum during my interview. Now he was critiquing my stair-climbing capacity.

"I'm . . . fine . . ." I huffed. "I've been . . . doing . . . a . . . lot of un . . . packing."

"Yeah I heard you bought the house in the woods. Isn't that a little big for just one person alone?"

For a split second I almost told him I wasn't alone in the house. I felt my face go red thinking about the company I had in the house.

"I may rent out one of the rooms," I said, although I had no plans to and I instantly didn't like the idea of anyone else in the house. "So are you a socialist?" yeah change the topic.

"A socialist? I'm not a socialist!" he sputtered, dumping my boxes to the floor of my new office. "Do you have more boxes?"

"Yes, but please don't put yourself to trouble helping me." I turned and headed down the stairs. He followed.

"No problem. We socialist like to help out. Geez, even if I were a socialist, I don't see what despising commercial vampire dreck has to do with anything-"

"Dreck? What a snob! Have you ever read Anne Rice?"

"No."

"Stephenie Meyer?"

"God, no!"

"Charlaine Harris?"

"Who?"

We continued arguing as he helped me bring up all my books and files.

"Sheesh, its hot," he said, wiping the sweat off his brow with a red bandana. "Would you like a beer?"

"At 10 in the morning?" I asked.

"Now who's the snob?" he asked throwing his hands up and walking out of my office.

* * *

After meeting some other people and unpacking everything I went home. I let myself into my house. I couldn't face one more step. I collapsed on the couch in the library, not even bothering to draw the blinds against the late afternoon sun and fell into a deep sleep.

I must have slept for several hours because when I woke up the room was nearly dark. The last of the sun bathed the couch in liquid amber and shadows stretched long across the library floor almost, but not quite reaching me.

_**Come here**,_ a voice from outside the shadow said.

I'm still asleep I told myself. I'm still dreaming.

**_Come here!_**

The voice was harsher now. Gone was the gentle murmur of last night. But there was also something desperate in it. She couldn't reach me in the light. She hadn't grown that strong.

_**I will once I feed on you again**, _the voice whispered. I shivered – not from fear but from desire at the memory of those lips sucking on me. I could feel myself going wet already just at the thought of her. But I had to assert myself that she was feeding on me and that was dangerous right?

I reached behind me for a lamp, remembering as I touched it that I hadn't plugged it in yet. The shadow stretched closer. The voice commanding me again. _**Come here!** _She was getting angry. I swung my legs around and planted my feet in the swath of sunlight. The wood felt warm. Solid. Was I really dreaming?

**_Yes, only dreaming,_ **the voice said,** coaxing now. _But such a lovely dream. Come to me!_**

The dreams were lovely . . . well, last night's dream had been. But still some shred of consciousness told me that there was a limit. If I let her into the daylight I might never wake up from those dreams.

I stood up and followed the path of sunlight across the floor to the wall switch. I flicked it on.

When I turned back I half expected her to still be there – my shadow lady – glowering at me with disapproval for my disobedience. I could feel her anger prickling the hairs at the back of my neck. I spun around but the room, awash with electrical light, was empty.

I went to bed determined to get a good night's sleep before the first day of classes. I turned out the light confident that the dream wouldn't come back tonight.

But it did.

I couldn't move or breathe. She stood over me, watching me, but not touching me. Was she angry that I turned on the lights to banish her from the library?

She hovered over me and I saw her face – not angry but sad, carved shadows were beneath her eyes. She'd grown weaker. As she stretched. I could feel the static electricity between us. Every hair on my body stood erect; my skin tingled with her nearness. Only her lips touched mine, pressing hard, trying to force my mouth open to inhale my breath.

What harm could she do to me if she was only a dream! Why not enjoy the dream?

I parted my lips. For a moment she hesitated, and then her tongue slid along my upper lip, teasing me. Her teeth tugged at my lower lip. I opened my mouth wider and she forced her tongue inside, suddenly hard and urgent as she sucked the breath from me. When she blew her breath into my lungs I could move, but only at her bidding and only to her rhythm.

Which was fine by me.

Tonight she was neither as violent as she'd been the first night or as gentle as the second. Instead she seemed to have learned the particular rhythm that opened all the locked rooms inside of me. She made love to me as though she knew my body as well as her own . . . as if she were inside my body and mind, anticipating my every desire before I even knew what they were. Looking into the face that hovered above mine, her dark eyes, her lips parted above mine . . . just when I was about to see it fully, just when the moonlight was about to illuminate all of her, the shadow swept across her brow, like clouds passing over the moon, and I felt myself being sucked into a deep, endless darkness in which there was nothing but the two of us, making love all night long.

I knew that time was deceptive in dreams and that dreams of a minute might feel as though they lasted all night, but that's what it felt like – as if we made love all night.

* * *

When I woke I was covered in sweat and my muscles were sore. When I touched myself between my legs I was wet and the insides of my thighs tender.

I had to drink half a pot of coffee to get myself ready for my first class. I was afraid I wouldn't be up for it, but once I was standing in front of the Smartboard where _Nightmare_ projected and I talked about demon lovers for 30 minutes I was happy. My class had interesting "listening faces". My students burst into excited discussion as soon as I opened the floor for questions. Half a dozen other students came up to me during the day begging to be in my class even though it was closed and full anyway.

* * *

I went to bed so exhausted that I was sure I wouldn't have the dream again but I did. I had it that night and every night for the next three weeks. Each night woke – or thought I awoke – to a moonlit room. I'd feel her weight on my chest and then, just when I thought I'd suffocate, she would press her lips to mine and blow her breath into my lungs and we'd make love – long, deep, utterly spine-rocking, toe-curling sex that went until the first light of day.

When she arrived I was waiting for her. The shadow branches reached and swelled, the moonlight crested above me, brilliant in its whiteness, but I kept my eyes open against the painfully bright light. I watched her take shape above me. For the first time I realized that she took shape because I watched her. She took her first breath only after she blew into my mouth and drew breath from me . . . would she move if I didn't move first? I kept myself still even though every cell in my body was pulled to every cell of the dark matter she was made of. Her eyes met mine . . . and widened with surprise.

"Who are you?" I asked, shocked that I had the power to speak.

But not as shocked as she was.

I saw the look of amazement spread across her face . . . a face that had never looked so complete or so beautiful before . . . and then she was gone. The moonlight drew back into the shadows with a hoarse rasp like a wave dragging over rough shingle and then the shadows themselves shriveled and shrank and vanished like smoke. I was left gasping like a fish flung onto the shore by an angry retreating tide.

* * *

**AN: you guys following this and reviewing ARE LOVELY**


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:Nope**

**ViciousNightGoddess I love how emotion filled your reviews are ! haha **

* * *

I woke up the next morning cranky and bad-tempered. I had a headache and felt like I was coming down with the flu. I thought a hot shower would make me feel better but when I turned it on I found that there was nothing but ice-cold water. I made a pot of hot coffee, only to discover the milk had gone sour. When I tried to toast some left over scones the toaster oven circuited, caught fire, and burned them to crisp before I could put the fire out.

I decided to walk to campus hoping the air and exercise would heal my bad mood, but the minute I got outside I realized that the balmy Indian summer weather had come to an abrupt end. It must have been under forty. I preserved, determined not to be a wuss about the cold, but ten minutes from the house it started to rain . . . or sleet, actually. I was soaked and frozen by the time I made it to the college center, where I stopped to buy a bagel and coffee. I was late for class and spent 10 minutes complaining to a confused group of students about the absurdity of sleet in October.

I planned to show _Rebecca _in class today but when I slid the disk into the computer it made a grinding noise and the spat it back out. I swore – and heard a few students giggle at my use of the Anglo-Saxon invective – and pushed the disk back in. my computer moaned like a sick cat.

I felt my eyes pricking with tears at the injustice of the world turning against me. I am not sure what I would have done if Nicky Ballard hadn't appeared at my side and gently taken over.

Within a few minutes my Mac was purring and playing the movie.

I felt annoyance growing again. I liked to show _Rebecca _because the novel was a classic reworking of Gothic themes and the Hitchcock film was beautiful and moody. But the truth was that the second Mrs. De Winter (the poor lady didn't even rate a first name) was a ninny. It was painful to watch her quailing under the imperious Mrs. Danvers and hiding broken china away like a guilty child.

I dismissed the class after half the movie and told them they should finish reading the book before the next class.

"Which ends differently than the movie so don't think you can get away with not reading it," then on a sudden impulse I added: "ask yourself this: what would you have done in the second Mrs. De Winter's shoes – or in the shoes of any of the heroines we've seen so far? Do these women have to be so helpless?"

I got weird puzzled gazes and realized I asked the question angrily. _Shit_. I really must be losing it.

I asked Nicky to stay behind and show me how she fixed my computer and while she did that I decided to ask how she's finding Fairwick so far.

"Well, it's a little strange. All my life I've watched the college teachers in town and they all seemed like they came from another world. Like that English teacher, Miss Eldritch. Have you ever watched her walk? She kinda floats. And those creepy Russian professors . . . do you know they all live together in a scary old Victorian mansion. It's all shuttered up during the day and you never see any of them except at night, even their classes are at night. Kids in town say they're part of some kinky sex triangle . . ." Nicky blushed. "Sorry I don't mean to be disrespectful."

I nodded and walked Nicky to her next class after she showed me what to do on the Mac next time. I left her outside her next class before I briskly walked across the quad. The truth was I that I'd been in a foul mood all morning because the dream had ended before the demon lover made love to me.

I froze on the path – so abruptly that a boy humming to his iPod bumped into me – at the realization that I'd become addicted to a fantasy?

Because that was it, wasn't it? A fantasy.

Only what I'd experienced last night –that moment of recognition and shock in her eyes – hadn't felt like a fantasy or a dream.

I'd treated the appearance of the demon lover in literature as a psychological manifestation, a literary trope, a symbol of repressed longing, domination fantasies, or rebellion against the status quo.

What if the demon lover was real?

I stood for another few minutes, measured by the library tower, which tolled the hour while I waited the return of rationality that would dismiss the idea that the woman who made love to me was somehow real.

"If she is real," I said to myself out loud, "then I'd better find out what I can about her."

No one stopped to look at me though, thinking I was talking through an ear set to someone. I wondered how long I could hide my craziness though.

I walked over to the library and sat down in a partly secluded part.

From my research I knew that religious traditions hold that repeated sexual activity with a succubus may result in the deterioration of health or even death.

I'd read before that the only way to get rid of a succubus was through exorcism, but I learned that if that didn't work (and apparently it didn't often enough), one could try iron locks on the doors and windows.

So that's why there was an iron dream catcher on my window. I blushed at the idea that someone knew about my demon lover and looked around the library, wondering who else might know I was having sex with a demon on a nightly basis, but the only other person in the room was a ponytailed boy with his head pillowed on an open art history textbook sound asleep.

The best way to send away an incubus or succubus was to confront it directly.

"_It takes an enormous effort to speak during the visitation, but if the victim can summon the preternatural will to speak and ask it to identify itself, then the demon will be sure to flee forever."_

I raised my head from the book and stared over the head of my sleeping companion out the leaded glass window at red and gold leaves falling in the quad.

_Who are you? _I had asked.

I supposed I should feel pleased with myself for summoning "the preternatural will to speak," but all I felt was bereft.

* * *

The demon lover didn't appear that night . . . or the night after that or the night after that.

I should have been grateful, but instead I was restless. I lay awake watching the shadows of branches quivering in the moonlight until the moon passed over my house and the moonlight faded. Then, since I couldn't sleep, I would pad barefoot into the spare room and take one of Jade's journals back to bed with me. I read them quickly and uncritically.

_I crave her as an opium addict longs for his pipe. She is my opium. I inhale her and I come to life. She is my life, without her I would wither and die._

I would read until the gray shadows of dawn fell where moonlight had fallen before. Then I would go out jogging before classes, choosing the woods again for my route. I ran as far as the honeysuckle thicket intertwined branches rubbing against one another in the breeze.

What would it feel like to leave one's home and wander for eternity through an ever-tightening maze? It was a strangely evocative metaphor for exile that haunted me on my cool-down walks back to the house with the feeling that I, too, was exile. Not from my old life but from the demon lover I'd scared away.

Although it was only the last week in October, most of the leaves had fallen from the trees already and it was cold enough for a winter coat – but I hadn't worn one. I was wearing the Armani tweed blazer, turtleneck, skinny jeans and thigh-high boots.

I was so cold crossing the quad that I decided to pop into the library and do some work there. Every time I tried to grade papers at home I ended up in the spare room reading 'a Jade novel' of a lover she could never really have because of age difference. Maybe working in library would give me the discipline I needed to finish grading these papers.

In the library I set myself to grading essays, managing only to marginally better to concentrate on what my students had to say about _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ and _Northanger Abbey_ that I had at the house. Every few sentences I would look up and stare out the window at the bare trees on the quad and feel a pang of sadness as if someone I'd loved had just died. What was wrong with me? I wondered, forcing myself to stare back down at a paper. I'd never been so unfocused. Was I really going through some kind of withdrawal from the demon lover? Or was I coming down with something? Swine flu, Lyme disease, and early-onset Alzheimer's danced through my head. Maybe the demon lover visitations were a symptom of a brain tumor.

Blurry vision – wasn't that a symptom of a stroke? I closed my eyes and laid my head down on the cool table. The polished wood felt cool on my forehead. No wonder that student had been sleeping here the last time I came; it was a perfect place to sleep.

I must have fallen asleep. I was in a crowd walking across an endless, rolling meadow. My legs and feet hurt as if I'd been walking for miles. I looked down and saw that my feet were bare in the wet grass. My legs were scratched and bleeding, my dress torn to tatters around my knees. I was alarmed at the sight. I shouldn't be bleeding.

I looked up. A figure on a white horse was leaning down towards me, reaching out her hands. I took her hands and she pulled me up onto the saddle in front of her. She wrapped her arms around me, chafing my bare, cold skin. My dress drenched and shredded, barely covering me. She pulled me back against her and I felt her nipples harden against my back. I knew we had to go. She steered her mount into the woods, deep into a glade that was covered by intertwining branches . . . like a chapel.

"I'd have married you in a church," she whispered in my ear as she pulled me from the horse and laid me on the soft grass, "but this will have to do."

She traced the line of my cheekbone with one finger and pressed it between my lips. "You are mine." She said, sliding her finger down my throat to my left breast. She drew circles around the nipple, the wetness tingling in the misty air, inscribing a spiral pattern over my heart, all the while keeping her eyes locked on mine.

"Yes," I moaned, arching my hips against her while she hovered a tantalizing inch above me. "We belong to each other. We always have and always will."

Still keeping her eyes locked on mine she pushed the last of my tattered dress up around my hips and pushed 2 fingers into me. We glowed together. We were dissolving into each other . . .

I startled awake, my face pressed against a damp patch on the wooden table, and sat up, swiping at my mouth, hoping no one had seen me drooling in my sleep. But that hope was dashed. Elizabeth Book was sitting across from me, her cool elegance making me feel even more bedraggled and embarrassed.

She smiled but her eyes looked sad. "You were dreaming," she said.

"I fell asleep while grading papers." I swept together the pile of papers that were strewn across the table. I must have scattered them as I reached for her . . . Dear God, had Dean Book heard me call out her name? Only I hadn't called her name . . . although I was sure I'd have known it in the dream. I had _known_ her. As well as I knew myself. Only how well was that? Who had I been in the dream?

"Have you been having disturbing dreams?" Liz asked.

I looked up from the papers and met her cold gaze. I felt the blood surge in my face at the thought that she somehow knew exactly what kind of dreams I'd been having. Dreams in which I made love until my flesh melted.

"No," I said. "Not unless you count dreaming about ungraded papers as disturbing. I'm afraid I've fallen a bit behind." I smiled ruefully and hoped she thought my embarrassment was from being caught literally sleeping on the job and not from having a depraved sex life with a demonic being. "But I promise I'll catch up and be more on the ball in the future."

Elizabeth Book reached across the table and laid her hand on mine. "I'm not worried about your performance, dear Tori. I'm worried about you. Not everyone makes the adjustment to Fairwick easily. Being here sometimes brings up . . . issues. And I have to admit I've had concerns with you living alone in that house . . ."

"There's nothing wrong. Dean Book. I'm just . . ." obsessed with a phantom lover? Sorry I chased her away? "Getting used to the routine. I promise you don't have to worry about me. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to take this home to grade. The library hasn't turned out to be the best work environment after all."


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer:Nope**

**be sure to read chapter before this, uploaded both at the same time.**

* * *

I'd lived in Honeysuckle House for three months now, but the place still reverberated like a hollow drum. The sparsely furnished look had felt airy in the warm weather, but with winter bearing down I longed for a cozier environment. I drove to the mall out on the highway and the Pottery Barn I bought a pair of loveseats in forest green velour for the parlor. Then I bought a rug, throw pillows and velveteen drapes, all in rich shades of ocher, rust and emerald. I picked up glassware and serving platters for the table, and guest towels and a bathmat for the downstairs powder room. On an impulse I bought matching fuzzy bathrobes and slippers for me and … I actually don't know whom?

On the way home I passed a garden and landscaping center called Valhalla and realized that this must be the store Robbie and his brother Rex ran. I stopped and soon had a wheelbarrow filled with pots of chrysanthemums and asters, beautiful handmade wreaths woven from maple leaves and bittersweet vines, and basket of dried flowers I thought would make a pretty centerpiece for the table.

Over the next few weeks the downstairs rooms magically filled with embroidered throw pillows, soft alpaca throws, scented candles, dishes of potpourri and crystal bowls brimming with cooking smells again as I tested out recipes for stuffing, pies, candied yams, puddings, gravies, cranberry sauces, and all the wines to go with them.

But the truth was that for all my frenetic daytime activity I was barely sleeping at all. Since that day in the library I'd been having dreams – not the erotic visitations of before, these felt . . . even weaker than dreams, more like half forgotten memories.

Always the same memory. It would start with the march across the desolated heath under a half-lit dawn sky with a crowd of travelers, their faces obscured by mist. In the distance the procession entered through the arch and vanished into the thick brambles. My heart contracted with fear at the sight. Where were they going? Where were _we_ going? Those woods were thick and dark and led who knew where. I heard my fears echoed in the whispers around me: the door was narrower that it used to be. No one knew if it still led back to Faerie. It was easy to lose your way among the brambles and then you could wander for eternity _in the Borderlands_. I could tell from the way those words were uttered what a nightmare that would be. But if we stayed here any longer we would fade into nothingness.

Then she would arrive on her fine white steed, which was already transparent in the morning sun, her full lips curving at the sight of me. She reached down for me and swung me up before her and we rode for the woods where she laid me down in the honeysuckle chapel and we sealed our vows to each other just as out flesh began to fade . . .

And I'd awake, my hands grasping handfuls of empty air, my lips forming a name I'd forget at the moment of waking, my body aching with frustrated desire.

Until the morning of Thanksgiving. The dream was the same until the moment she drew the spiral pattern on my breast, but this time I felt her touch burning into the flesh, branding me . . .

I startled awake, a fiery pain in my chest. I ran to the mirror and pulled my nightshirt up. There on my left breast was an intricate coiling spiral, like something out of the Book of Kells, seared into my skin.

Not only was the demon real, she was still here. And she had branded me. Like a piece of property.

And part me had enjoyed it. That was the part that filled me with shame; not all the wild sex I'd enjoyed with this phantom, but the fact that I desired her so much that I was willing to give up everything to be with her.

Me, who had based my one adult relationship on the principle of neither of us giving up _anything_.

This just wasn't like me. I had to fight it – and her. But how?

* * *

After my last class I went looking for Soheila Lilly's office in the maze of narrow hallways on the first floor of Fraser Hall. I wandered for several minutes before finding a door with Soheila Lilly's name.

A melodious voice bade me enter. When I opened the door I thought I had been transported to a Near Eastern bazaar. Persian rugs lined the floor and bright multi-colored tapestries hung from the walls and ceiling. Instead of fluorescent bulbs that wanly lit my office, three glass lanterns - One sapphire blue, one emerald green, one amber yellow – cast warm pools of jeweled light. The polished desk was bare save for an old leather-bound book.

Soheila, dressed all in shades of caramel from her cashmere shawl to her suede boots to her lipstick, was leaning back in her chair.

"Ah Tori. I thought I might have the pleasure of your company today," she said. She smiled but her eyes remained distant and sad.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" she gestured to a steaming silver samovar on top of an oak filing cabinet.

"Sure," I said, sitting down in the carved chair in front of her desk. I placed my messenger bag on top of lap. "If its no trouble. I would like to ask you a few questions about that story you once told me . . . the one about the demon lover who was stolen by the Fairy Queen and then escaped 20 years ago and still roams around, nowhere to be found?"

Soheila sighed as she poured dark toffee-colored tea into a silver-rimmed glass. The truth was that I had forgotten all of what Soheila had told me cause I was to engross with my own lover at the time. She brought me my tea and sat down with hers behind her desk.

"So about the story . . ."

"I find the ritual of drinking tea puts my students at ease . . ." she tilted her head and narrowed her lovely golden eyes. "But its not working on you is it? You are anxious about these questions you have for me."

I laughed, a little to shrilly, and plucked at the neck of my sweater even though I knew the mark was hidden. "Do you have a degree in psychology as well as Middle Eastern studies?" I asked. It came out sounding a little cattier than I meant it to. When I'm nervous I can sound a little . . . well, snooty.

"Yes, actually. I studied with Jung . . ."

She faltered at my surprised expression. She'd have had to be in her eighties to have studied with Carl Jung himself and she did certainly not look that old.

"I mean, of course, that I studied at the Jung Institution in Zurich."

"I bet Jung had some interesting things to say about demon lovers."

"He did, but I don't think that's what you came here to talk about."

"No, I guess not. You see, I've been trying to find a reference for that story you told me about the demon lover who was kidnapped by the Fairy Queen . . . I think you called the demon Egan. It's for a book I'm writing. I haven't been able to find anything on that particular myth on the Internet or in the library, which seems to have just about everything on folklore ever written. So I was wondering if you could tell me the source for the story, you told me."

"It was an oral source," she replied. "I don't think anything's ever been written on it."

"Oh," I said, trying not to sound as disappointed as I felt. No matter how keen their scholarly interest, academics usually don't weep over missing sources. " That's to bad . . . or maybe not . . ." I brightened. "It could be an opportunity for an article. We could collaborate, are you still in contact with the source?"

"No. He died years ago . . ." Her eyes clouded and she turned towards the window.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to bring up painful memories. Its really not important." I started to get up but she turned back to me pinning me with her suddenly focused stare.

"But it_ is important_ to you, isn't it? Why do you want to know about this demon in particular?"

I sat back down again and tried to find an answer for her question that didn't involve telling her that I thought the demon lover was real. No matter how sympathetic she seemed, I was sure she'd tell the dean that I needed psychiatric help if I did that.

"Well I've done a lot of research but I've never come across a story like that one. It makes her more . . . well human. It's like in _Jane Eyre_ when we learn how Rochester was tricked into marrying Bertha, or when we find out that the Beast is under a curse. It explains their behavior and makes them . . ." I was going to say _loveable_, but instead I said, "redeemable."

"It seems you have all the fairy tale rationales you need," she said, her voice, for the first time since I'd met her, cold.

Stung. I retreated into a pose of a chilly academic.

"But not a genuine folklore source for the phenomenon. Your Egan story could be a link between the demons of folklore and the heroes of Gothic Fiction. But if you don't recall enough about the source . . ."

"I remember _everything_," she said, getting to her feet and shrugging the caramel shawl from her shoulders impatiently. She crossed the few feet to the door beside the filing cabinet and swung it open, revealing a walk-in closet lined with more oak cabinets. "Please," she said, turning to me with a strained smile on her face. "Drink your tea this will only take a minute."

I heard he boot heels reverberating against the hardwood as she vanished into the closet, which must have been much bigger than my puny office closet. I took a sip of the cooling tea and looked up at the bookshelf next to me. Many of the books were in Farsi, but there were also ones in German, French, Russian and a few languages I couldn't identify. One that caught my attention, however, was in English. Printed in gold lettering on its red leather binding was a single word: DEMONOLOGY.

I slid it off the shelf, noting that the pages were tipped with gold leaf, and turned to the table of contents. My eyes fell on the title of chapter 3: How To Invoke and Banish a Succubus. Exactly what I needed.

I looked toward the closed door, but Soheila was still invisible. I could hear her file drawer opening. I looked back at the book in my lap. It lay on top of my book bag. It only took the slightest motion to slide it inside.

"Here it is," Soheila said, coming out of the closet holding a small blue envelope. "It's my only copy, so please don't lose it."

"I'll take very good care of it," I said sliding the envelope into my bag in between the pages of the stolen book. I got to my feet, anxious to be gone before she noticed the gap on her bookshelf. "Thank you very much."

"You're very welcome. I hope it helps," she said. "The source paid dearly for the information there. Use it wisely."


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:No**

* * *

I walked home quickly . . . I'd only been here for three months and already I had turned into a crazy wiccan lady casting spells and wearing baggy sweats . . . okay, I wasn't really wearing baggy sweats but with the weight I've lost, my skinny jeans were a bit baggy.

I sat down at the kitchen table with the purloined book. If the spell required anything esoteric – eye of newt, for instance – I'd be out of luck. I almost hoped it would, I'd grabbed the book on impulse and had been too busy worrying I'd get caught to really think about what I was going to do with it until now. Was I really planning to _invoke a demon_? Because the chapter title I'd glimpsed in Soheila's office suggested you had to invoke one before banishing one.

Skimming the chapter I found that the ingredients necessary for casting the spell were already available in the house.

The demonology book said to summon the demon to a place "Where it wont to appear." Well, it was _wont_ to appear in my bedroom – in my bed, actually, but I didn't want to do this in my bed. Aside from the risk of setting the sheets on fire, I thought it sent the wrong message. Just looking at my bed reminded me of the long nights of lovemaking . . . the way she kissed my breasts, the way she looked at me while she slid down my body . . .

_No, I should definitely stay away form the bed._ I wasn't invoking the demon lover to have sex, not was I inviting her to stay. As I arranged a circle of candles on the floor I said aloud what it was I wanted to do. _Set your intention_. My yoga teacher always told us at the beginning of class. If there were ever a time to be clear about my intentions this was it.

"I'm calling her tell her to go away and leave me alone," I said, plugging the kettle into a wall socket.

"Because I don't want her," I said, pouring a circle of salt outside the circle of candles. A pang of longing shot through me. The spiral brand on my breast tingled.

"Okay, maybe I want her, but I don't _wan_t to want her."

I sprinkled cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon into the sugar bowl and set it by the kettle. I needed one more object to take with me into the circle. The demonology book said to have a "gift" for the demon – some object that meant something to the invoker of the spell. I went to my desk and began opening up the little drawers . . . I had put it in one of them . . . when I found the object I was looking for I slipped it into my pocket along with a book of matches from Sapphire.

The water had come to a rolling boil in the electric kettle. I poured it into the sugar bowl over the spices and then covered it. Then, with the demonology book tucked under arm, holding the warm bowl in two hands, I stepped into the circle and sat down cross-legged in the center. I placed the bowl in front of me and opened the demonology book to the chapter on invoking and banishing succubae, which I'd marked with the envelope that Soheila had given me. I hesitated for a moment, anxious to start the spell, but if Soheila's "source" had anything useful to tell me about this creature I'd better find out now. I opened the envelope and took out the folded pages. They were thin blue paper that people used to use for airmail letters in the days before faxes and emails. My mother had a trove of letters on this stationery – "from the olden days" she had told me when I was 11 and I found a stack of ribbon tied letters. The age when most girls gave up fairy tales for teen romances, but I, still bewitched by the fairy tales my parents told me every night, believed she meant from the days of the knights and dragons and fairy princesses, not just the 1970's when she and my father had corresponded the summer after they met at St Andrews College.

"He courted me by letter," I still recalled my mother saying. "Just like in an old romantic novel."

I sometimes wondered if my future love of romantic novels hadn't come from that one chance comment.

The sound of crackling as I opened it reminded me of her, but the contents of the letter soon had my undivided attention.

"My dearest Soheila," it read in a slanting script that leaned toward the right margin of the page as if in a hurry to get to the end of each line.

_Write to tell you one last story – you were always my best listener! – The story of the Egan. I came here to this country to find her – to track her down to her roots, so to speak, but I am afraid now that instead of me tracking her down, she had been pursing me all along – since my childhood._

_When I was but a boy of 12 my sister Katy fell ill with a wasting disease that the village doctor could not name or stop. She, who had been a lively, beautiful girl, grew pale and then so weak that she could not leave her bedroom. The village doctor said it must be consumption, although she didn't cough or have fever, and urged my family to take her away to the mountains for a change of air, but when the idea was broached to Katy she grew hysterical and shrieked that she would die if made to leave her bed. My mother said we should carry her out of the house kicking and screaming if need be, but my father, always tender of heart where Katy was concerned, couldn't bear to do it. And so we stayed and Katy grew thinner and paler with each day._

_One night I heard her cry out loud and, thinking she needed something, I crept into her room. When I opened the door I thought I must still be asleep and dreaming. The room was flooded with moonlight, but the moonlight was in the shape of a white horse and on that horse rode a woman cloaked in a shadow. I stood speechless in the doorway – in shadow myself – as I watched Katy rise from her bed and go to the woman. She reached down her hand, and that's when I saw that she was made out of shadow herself. She was no more substantial than the shadow branches that fell across the floor, but I watched my sister take her hand and be pulled up onto the back of the moonlight horse. I watched my sister wrap her arms around the shadow woman and rest her head upon her shadow back. Her face was glowing in the moonlight, a smile on her lips, but I saw, too, that she was falling into the shadow, being eaten alive by it. I tried to cry out then, but I couldn't. it was like a hand had reached out – a shadow hand – and squeezed my throat. I felt cold all over and deathly afraid, but I knew that if I didn't cry out I'd lose my sister forever. To this day I don't know how I did it, but somehow I summoned the will to speak._

"_Leave her!" I cried._

_The shadow woman turned to face me then, only she wasn't a shadow anymore, she was gaining flesh, pale white flesh as though the moonlight was pouring into a mold and making something whole._

_When I looked into her eyes an immense sadness came over me, a sadness that felled me to my knees and dragged me into the dark._

_I woke the next morning on the cold floor to the sound of my mother's cries. She was holding the lifeless body of my sister, who lay on the floor beside me._

_She seemed to know what had happened… _

"_That was Egan, the love talker, a demon that robs women of their lives. They say that once she was human as you and me, but she got lost in the woods one day and fell asleep and the Fairy Queen came with her Riders and found her. She was so beautiful that she had to have her. She took her back with to Faerie, where she dwells to this day, more fey than human now after all these centuries, a shadow and moonlight. She longs to be human again but can only become human if a human girl falls in love with her. And so she enchants girls, hoping to make one love her, but if she fails, the girl perishes."_

"_But Katy loved her," I said. "I saw her become human."_

"_She would have killed you no doubt if Katy hadn't been here."_

_I've made it my life's mission to track her down and banish he to Hell or Faerie or whatever (Yes, I know my mother's tale says she was human, but is that any reason to forgive her? On the contrary, I think it is all the more reason to condemn her)_

_I have felt myself growing weaker. I believe she is draining me of my life._

_I embark on this journey and before I do I send you the manuscript of my last book for you to dispose of as you see fit. There is no one whom I trust more, azizam. Know always that I went into the darkness with your face before me and that if I don't return it was not from want of loving you._

_Dooset daram,_

_Angus Fraser_

_August 29, 1911_

The signature and date caught me by surprise. Angus taught at Fairwick a hundred years ago . . . I pushed the idea aside for now . . .

Assuming it was the same demon. I sat with the book open in my lap and the sugar bowl of boiling water in front of me. Soon it would be too cool to use. The instructions said that once the spellcaster entered the circle she shouldn't step out of it again. So if I was going to do this . . .


	9. Chapter 9

I lit the candles while reciting the name of used in the story.

"_Egan, hear me._

_Egan, I call you._

_Egan come to me."_

When I finished lighting all the candles I uncovered the sugar bowl. A plume of spice-scented steam rose into the air. It smelled like pumpkin pie. Comforting and incongruous at the same time.

I took out the object I'd removed from my desk drawer. The offering. It was a stone my father had given me when I was 6 and had a nightmare. It was chalky white and had a hole worn through the middle. He said people called stones like these fairy stones because if you looked through the hole at the break of dawn you could see fairies, but that they also protected their owners from nightmares. I'd slept with it under my pillow every night until I was in my teens and my parents were dead. Then, when I was 15, I'd talked Trina into going to Central Park with me at dawn.

I convinced her by playing the dead parents card, as she put it. We smoked pot and sat on the boulders overlooking Sheep Meadow, waiting for the sun to appear through the buildings to the east. When the first rays of light streamed across the meadow I held the stone up to my eye.

I hadn't seen any fairies, but I'd heard a buzzing in my ears – like a hive of bees swarming over my head – I'd put it down to the pot and lack of sleep.

I stopped sleeping with the stone under my pillow then, but I'd kept it in the same box where I kept my mother's letters.

Now I dropped the stone into the hot water, reciting the name again.

"Egan, accept my offer."

The plume of steam wavered and then thinned into a long tail, as if it had been funneled through the hole in the stone. It coiled in the air – a party streamer tossed on the breeze . . .

There hadn't been a breeze before, had there?

The candle flame danced in it, the wicks guttering in the pools of melted wax. Outside I could see the treetops tossing in the wind. The steam twisted in the air, coiling like the tail of a kite. I watched it, mesmerized, for several seconds until I realized that it was no longer coming out of the bowl. It had separated from its source and taken on a life of its own.

The next gust blew out the candles.

It's just the wind and water molecules, I said to myself. But those water molecules were glowing now like phosphorescent plankton – as if they also had a life of their own.

I took a deep breath. The steam eddied toward me as if borne on my breath. The brand on my breast tingled. I exhaled and the steam moved again. It arranged itself into the shape of a face. Her face.

I opened my mouth . . . amazed, yes, but also suddenly stymied. I hadn't really figured out what I was going to say if she showed up.

The only thing I could think of was "Who are you?" and that hadn't worked out so well before.

Before I could think of what else to say she beat me to the punch.

"Who are** _you_**?" she asked, as if she'd just thought of a comeback to my previous question.

I laughed out loud, my expelled breath pushing her back in the air.

"My name's Victoria Vega" I said.

"**_Victoria_**." The name was a sigh on the wind that caressed my face. I found I liked hearing my name on her lips.

"I know you," the breeze whispered, tugging at my shirt collar. "Don't you remember?"

For a moment I wondered if that's why I had dreamed of her all those years – because a part of me _had_ remembered.

The breeze insinuated itself between my breast and traced the lines of the spiral pattern on my left breast making the skin tingle and my nipple harden. The coil flamed up as if I'd just been branded. Oh yes, _that_ I remembered.

"You don't know a thing about me," I said, batting the breeze away. "And I don't even know your name."

Her lips formed a smile, stiffly, as if she wasn't used to moving those muscles – or did she have muscles? This image was different from her earlier visitations. I had a feeling it was a remote projection.

"I have many names, and you certainly know my Demon name Egan and my human one Ja-Never mind Victoria you summoned me ?" she said. Her voice wasn't coming from her mouth. It rode the air, billowing in and out of the window, winding around me like a silk scarf. Outside the trees thrashed.

"Are you the same . . ." I hesitated on what to call her. " . . . Woman as in Angus Fraser's story?"

She frowned at the name and the wind coming through the window turned cold.

"Don't believe everything that man says."

"Did you seduce his sister? Did you kill her?"

"Katy." The name was a sigh torn from the wind. "I lost her. It was hissss fault."

"I doubt that," I said, beginning to grow impatient. Awake and with my eyes open she was decidedly less charming than she'd been in my dreams.

"Listen," I said. "I called you here to tell you to go . . ." the mist rippled and the wind roared. It took me a moment to realize she was laughing.

"_That's _why you called me? I don't think so Vega. I think you called me because you want **_more_ **of me."

The mist wrapped itself around me. The air had gotten very cold in the room but the mist touching my face was warm. The warmth spread through me like a warm liqueur in the bloodstream, coiling into my pelvis and, God help me, landing right between my legs.

"No . . . you're a succubus you'd suck me dry and leave me dead . . ."

"Not if you loved me,' she whispered, her voice a warm wave that lapped at my ear and filled me with longing.

"That's a big _if,_" I replied. "Love comes and goes in my experience. I wouldn't bet my life on it." An image of my parents appeared in my mind, but I quickly banished it.

Her 'arms' loosened around me. When she spoke again her voice sounded different – less silky, more _real_. It made me realize she'd been acting up until now.

"That's been your experience?" she asked. "You poor girl . . ." and then the silky voice was back. "It wouldn't be your experience with me."

"You've got a lot to learn chica. There's more to love than being a sex goddess," I said tensing my muscles trying hard not to think about _how good_ she was in bed. "Or maybe it's been to long since you were human to know that."

I thrashed my arms out, breaking free. Then before she could regroup and whisper her sweet nothings into my ear, I dropped the lid over the bowl and recited the three lines I'd memorized from the book:

"_I send you away, demon!_

_I cast you into darkness, Egan!_

_Begone, Succubus!"_

The mist was sucked out the window in a gust so strong it knocked me flat on my back. My right hand hit one candle, spilling wax over my knuckles. I scrambled to my knees and crawled to the window about to pull it close, when I froze in place.

The trees were leaning east, every twig and leaf pulled taut as though by an irresistible magnetic force away from the house. It was perfectly still outside, as if the world were holding its breath . . .

I heard it before I saw it coming. A sound like a freight train bearing down on the house. Then I saw it , a tidal wave of air mowing down the forest, snapping hundred year old oaks like toothpicks. I ducked a split second before it hit the house. Glass shattered above me and rained down into my hair. I pasted myself on the floor and covered my head with my hands. Something hit my head – one of the candles from the smell of it.

For some reason that pissed me off. I raised myself up onto my elbows and shouted at the wind.

"If this is how you act when a girl says no, I'm glad I sent you away! I sure as hell wasn't going **to fall in love with you**!"

I duck-walked out the room the minute I got out the door slammed shut behind me.

There was a banging coming from the front door.

I opened the door and 3 figures appeared. The middle one removed its hood and I saw it was my boss, Elizabeth Book. The other figures soon followed and I saw it was Diana Hart and Soheila Lilly.

Dean Book spoke up. "We're here for an intervention."


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer:Victorious characters are not mine**

* * *

They all came into the foyer . . .

"How did you know . . . "?

"I saw that you took the demonology book from my office," Soheila said. "I was at Liz's house telling her when the wind came up."

"And I saw the animals breaking from the forest and then heard the wind," Diana said, handing me her damp down coat. "I called Liz right away and she confirmed it was coming from Honeysuckle House."

"We knew you were using Angus's spell for banishing succubae," Liz said handing me her coat, which gave off a spark of electricity.

"I could have told you that the spell has its drawbacks," Soheila said. "It certainly should never be used by the person possessed by the succubus."

"I am not _possessed_," I said huffily. I was going for righteous, but since I was weighed down by the heavy coats I sounded more like an aggrieved housemaid. Or, I realized as the women exchanged pitying looks, a dope addict in denial.

As we sat around the kitchen table I finally broke the silence.

"What are you three? Witches?"

Diana laughed. "Well Liz is. She's one of the most powerful witches I've ever met." Diana smiled lovingly at the dean and I wondered why it had taken me so long to realize they were a couple. Apparently my gaydar was working about as well as my witch-dar. "But me, I'm just a garden variety fairy."

"Oh my dear, there's nothing garden variety about you." Elizabeth slipped her arm around Diana's narrow shoulders. "Diana is from the ancient line of Sidhe, who have tended to the Fairy Queen for time immemorial."

"I see," I said, surprised at how un-surprised I was. "And you Soheila – are you a fairy or a witch?"

"Oh neither," Soheila said, smiling. "I'm a demon."

Seeing the expression on my face she laughed.

"Oh _daemon_, as the more politically correct of my tribe call themselves now."

"Soheila, you really mustn't be shy about your origins. Soheila is descended from a great Mesopotamian wind spirit . . ."

"Really, Liz, I don't think it's necessary to go into that right now. The important thing for Tori to know is that most of us are no more dangerous than the fairies – although that's not really saying much. We can discuss genus and species later when we have more time. I'm afraid all you've managed to do with your spell is rile up your Succubus. We've got our work cut out for us."

Soheila was clearly the most impatient of the three to get on with banishing the Succubus. Maybe it took a demon to know what one was capable of, but I had a bunch of questions of my own.

"Is the whole faculty made up of fairies and witches and-" I still felt a little uncomfortable calling Soheila a demon "-other supernatural creatures?"

"No." Dean Book replied with a straight face, " We have vampires as well dear, but there are a few who are human like Mr. Harris for instance."

Before I could even respond to that Soheila started talking again.

"The succubus seems to know how to keep her victims alive for a long time. The Fairy Queen used to use her for pleasure and then when the Fairy Queen grew weak she used to banish the succubus to the Borderlands for a little while."

"Sounds a little mean," I said . . .

Soheila clucked her tongue.

"You're thinking she is the way she is because of how she's been treated. But you read Angus's letter. This demon killed his sister. Please don't underestimate her. Banishing her is the right thing to do."

Somehow I agreed to let them banish her correctly.

* * *

I opened my bedroom door. In the light from the hallway (all the light bulbs in the bedroom had been shattered), the room looked as if a wild animal had ravaged it. Salt, melted wax, and broken glass were strewn across the floor. The bed sheets had been torn from the bed. The mattress had been ripped to shreds. On the wooden headboard were five long gashes that looked like the mark of a clawed beast.

"You certainly made her angry," Soheila said, examining the claw mark. I thought I detected a hint of admiration in her voice. "What did you say to her?"

I tried to remember our little dialogue, but like most lovers' spats it was hard to unwind its logic, if any. Somehow it had gone rather quickly from her asking my name to me getting pissed off at her. Oh yeah, now I remembered.

"I told her that there was more to love than being good in bed."

Soheila's eyes widened. Diana clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh and glanced over towards Elizabeth Book, but the dean was staring at something on the floor.

"I think this is her reply," she said.

I came around the bed and looked at the floor. Written in the salt were two words: **_what more?_**

"Fascinating," Soheila whispered. I could barely hear her for the wind roaring through the broken window, it swept the salt and glass across the floor erasing the words – as if suddenly embarrassed by them – and I felt a momentary pang of . . . what? Disloyalty? As if I'd exposed her to the ridicule of these women.

I shook the feeling away. Look at what she's exposed me to! My boss, neighbor and colleague were cleaning up my bedroom, literally picking up the pieces of a supernatural dalliance gone wrong. I hardened my heart to her and pitched in.

She'd pulled out all the little drawers – all but the locked one – and dumped paperclips everywhere. My notes for my book were scattered on the floor. _She_ should be embarrassed.

What kind of question was that? What more?

While collecting the scattered pages I found the fairy stone and put it in my pocket.

"There's a door to Faerie here-" Diana said, cutting her eyes towards the back of the house "-in the woods."

"As far as we know," Soheila added. "It's the last door to Faerie."

"You see," Elizabeth, said walking over to where Diana was standing, "The Old World witches worshipped the old gods, the horned god . . ."

"Cernunnos," Diana whispered.

"Mithra," Soheila breathed.

"And the Triple Goddess," Elizabeth continued.

"Mother," Diana said.

"Maiden," Soheila echoed.

"And Crone. The people of the town named it Fairwick to celebrate the union of fair folk and the witches." Liz said leaning against the windowsill.

"But then," Diana interrupted, "during the Middle Ages the Old Witches were persecuted because they worshiped the Old Gods. Some of the witches renounced their connection with the fey . . ."

"But others came here and reestablished their connection with the fey," Elizabeth continued. "It was decided that the college should be formed to store the knowledge that was accumulated. And to safeguard the door . . ."

"Because not every being that comes through the door is harmless," Soheila said. "The succubus for instances, I tried to get her to go back . . ."

"A century ago?" I asked. "So you're . . ."

"Older than I look," Soheila finished for me. "But even I couldn't make this creature go back into Faeirie. She's very powerful. Angus then tried and died before he could do that . . ." she paused and looked away. Diana laid her hand on her shoulder.

* * *

I sat down in the circle between Soheila and Liz. Soheila drew a fresh circle of salt around us, intoning something in Farsi that somehow made the salt stick to the floor despite the wind, and then sat back down next to me. There was a candle in front of each of us. Held down by iron doormice.

"It would be safer if the mice were outside the circle," Soheila said, sounding uncharacteristically irritable. "We would be ironbound."

"But then Diana couldn't be in the circle," Liz snapped. "Just cause you've trained yourself to withstand iron doesn't mean she can. I'm not even sure this is good for her . . ."

"I'm fine," Diana said in a strained imitation of her usual cheerful voice.

We lit our candles and then joined hands.

"The circle is complete," Elizabeth said briskly, as if calling a faculty meeting to order. "Lets keep it that way. Soheila will recite the banishing ritual. The rest of you repeat these words to yourselves:_ Begone, succubus, I send you away, demon. I cast you into darkness_. Keep repeating them and **don't let any other thought enter your mind** . . ."

Soheila began to speak in Farsi. The words blended into a stream of sound that intertwined with the gusting wind outside, like two rivers meeting. I began reciting the lifesaving yoga mantra:

"Begone succubus, I send you away, demon. I cast you into darkness."

What more? She had asked. Pretending helplessness when anyone would know what more. What about decency and caring and really bothering to see –

"Begone succubus. I send you away, demon. I cast you into – "

-Who was she trying to seduce. Anyone who knew me certainly wouldn't mess with my desk or my papers.

"-darkness. Begone succubus I send you-"

Any woman worth her salt would know that talking was at least as important as lovemaking. She'd share something of herself, too.

"-into darkness begone succubus I send you away demon I cast you-"

Although maybe that is what she's been doing by showing me those dreams about fairies marching. I'd asked her, "Who are you?" and the sex dreams had stopped and the marching dreams had begun_._

_ Is that what you were trying to do? Tell me who you are?_

A particularly fierce gust of wind blew against me, but it wasn't cold. Although snow was now covering the heads and shoulders of my circle mates and ice had formed over the broken glass in the windowpanes, the wind that lapped against my face was warm as a Caribbean breeze. _Yessss_, it crooned into my ear, sending hot waves down to my toes.

_I want to know you and for you to know me. You and I have known each other before_.

I laughed out loud. It was the oldest line in the book: _don't I know you from somewhere?_

But even as I laughed an image was blooming inside my head – the rolling heath, the long line of travelers, my companions fading into mist before we could reach the door . . . because Riders were going through first . . . and then the one horse coming back. For _me._ She was coming back for me. Then we were in the glade – our wedding chapel – making love. But then someone was calling her. "No," I cried out – in my dream and in the Honeysuckle House, "don't leave me!" but she was already turning, looking over her shoulder, at her. The woman in green on the dark horse who bade her to come and she dared not disobey.

My eyes snapped open.

_You left me for that . . . _

_I couldn't help myself, Tori. She was the Fairy Queen. _The warm coil wound itself down the neck of my shirt and caressed my breast. I wrenched my right hand out of Liz's hand and slapped it away.

"Get out!" I hissed. "I never want to see you again."

For one moment the warm air turned into a hand and grasped mine, but I let it go – as she did mine so long ago – and then the coiled air snapped back like a rubber band and hit the window, shattering what was left of the glass. It whipped against the house and then into the woods. I heard trees snapping and something exploded.

I heard one last moan soughing through the woods.

Then everything went quiet.


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer:NO OWNERSHIP. this is the last Disclaimer thing i'm doing. This is FanFic….**

* * *

"Would you mind taking a walk with me?" Elizabeth asked.

"Of course not."

"Good. Make sure you wear sturdy no-skid boots. The footing will be rather treacherous where we're going."

Since the entire town was coated with a two-inch layer of ice I thought Elizabeth Book's warning was unnecessary, but when I saw she was heading for the woods I wondered if any warning was sufficient. Before the temperature had dropped the wind had knocked branches and even whole trees down; then the debris had been coated with so much ice that it had all melded together into a glittering, unmovable tangle. I couldn't even see where the path was. I turned back to look at my house. The shutters over my bedroom window had been completely torn off, and the rest of the shutters were missing slats and hanging crookedly from their hinges. The copper gutter had been wrested from the north eave where it hung limply, twisted like a chewed up swizzle straw. So many slate tiles were missing from the roof that it looked like a checkerboard.

"What a spoiled brat!" I cried. "That demon's little temper tantrum is going to cost me thousands of dollars in repairs."

Elizabeth Book turned around and looked at the back of my house.

"Yes that's the problem with succubae – they're all libido. And she can't use being a demon as an excuse, Soheila is a demon and look how evolved she is! Honestly though, I'm surprised that damage isn't worse. From the state of the woods I'd say the wind she summoned was moving at a hundred and twenty-five miles per hour. If it had hit your house at that velocity it wouldn't be standing. Something must have lessened the impact . . ." she switched her gaze from the house to me. "Almost as if you managed an aversion spell before the wind hit . . ."

"I don't know any spells," I said somewhat petulantly, peeved that the dean wasn't taking my house damage seriously enough. "Should I? You said that I had fairy blood in me, not that I was a witch . . . is being a witch heredity?" I asked, suddenly overcome with all the unknowns in this new world I'd stumbled into.

"There are witch families that have passed down their craft from generation to generation," Dean Book said as she stepped over a downed pine bough, which the ice had turned into a festive Christmas decoration.

"I myself come from a long line of witches. No one is sure how much of being a witch is nature to nurture. Some believe that the original witches interbred with the fey, which is what gave them their power. But the more reactionary anti-fey witches believe that fey blood cancels out a witch's power."

"There are reactionary witches?" I asked, scrambling after her, grasping ice-slick branches to keep from slipping. It felt like we were walking through the ruins of a strange and foreign world. The ice rings of Saturn, perhaps or Jotunheim, the glacial home of the Norse ice giants. The violence that had caused the wreckage was frightening and yet the effect was oddly beautiful. Giant trees had been snapped in two, but pine cones, acorns, and even the delicate yellow flowers of witch hazel trees had been preserved in ice like sugared treats to put on top of a cake.

It seemed an appropriate setting in which to learn about this other strange world that Dean Book was describing.

"I'm afraid so," she told me with a pained look. She paused as we reached the honeysuckle thicket.

Peering closer I made out the shapes of small birds, tiny mice, voles, and chipmunks – all the tiny creatures that had died in the thicket.

"Why do so many creatures die here?" I asked.

"These are the Borderlands," she said. "Small creatures lose their way. Even large creatures – very powerful creatures – lose their way between our world and Faerie. The door is narrowing and opening for shorter periods. That's why we were so excited when we realized you might be a doorkeeper."

"I still don't know what you mean by that. It sounds like some kind of doorman or janitor . . ."

"That's what the Romans called their doorkeepers. They knew that thresholds were sacred and that certain gods were dedicated to crossing places – Janus, the two-faced god and Hecate, the three-faced goddess of the crossroads – both were doorkeepers, as you are Tori."

"You're saying that I'm descended from gods and goddesses!" I was trying to make a joke of it. "That's even harder to believe than being descended from fairies."

"They're one and the same Tori. What we call fairies and demons are the last of the race of old gods. They're all from the same ancient race – although the variety within them is great, especially as the old ones begin interbreeding with humans . . . as you can see here . . ."

I followed her gaze, seeing nothing except tangled ice thicket at first, but then, as the sun shone through the tangled branches, I began to make out shimmering shapes.

It looked like a giant spider web had been strung between the branches and then frozen – but the pattern in the web revealed faces in its intricate weave the faces of men and women and animals, and some creatures that seemed to be neither human nor animal. Some had human faces with horns or pointed ears or reptilian skin some had animal faces with human intelligence glittering in their eyes. All were contorted with pain.

"What are they?" I asked

Elizabeth stepped closer pointing at a woman whose slim body ended in a fish's tail.

"This one's an undine," she said. "Creatures of the water. The male undines are dying out, which might be why this one risked coming over, although I don't know why she'd come outside of breeding season. Poor thing. She must have been confused. She'll never survive."

"Are they all dead?"

"We're probably better off without her. Your succubus raised a storm in both worlds. Generally only one or two creatures cross at a time, but the storm must have driven many into the Borderlands." She continued as if she hadn't heard my question.

She abruptly turned and started walking back to the house . . . I just followed.

On the way back something occurred to me.

"Dean Book . . ."

"Oh, please call me Liz"

"Um, okay . . . Liz. I saw a lot of faces in that clearing but I didn't see _her_. The succubus, I mean."

"I know who you mean. Yes I noticed that too. She might have gone back into Faerie or . . ."

"Or she's still around somewhere?"

Liz sighed. "She's haunted these woods for more than a hundred years, but I wouldn't worry to much about her getting back into the house . . . unless you invite her in, that is." She gave me a sharp look.

"Oh I wouldn't do that."

She patted my shoulder. "You're a smart girl."

* * *

The following week was pretty strange. Everyone acted as if noting had happened. College had closed down for the week because of the damage the storm created. Well my house was well under way to almost looking perfect again. Robbie was really good at fixing things.

It's Monday today and I really don't feel like being at college, plus today my students have all been totally out of it, talking about some hot Goth like woman who "radiated sex and power" as Nicky had so lovely explained.

I was walking to Soheila's office to have some of her relaxing tea when I heard something come from Liz's office. I stopped in my track and stepped closer to the door that was cracked open.

"I deserve this after what you tried to put me through Liz!" the strange voice said accusingly towards the dean

"Jade why don't you just . . ." the dean stopped talking " Hi Tori."

Damn it! No running away and hiding now, she knows I'm here.

"Hi dean Book . . . uhm Liz?" I said stepping into her office locking eyes with what I can only explain as 'hot woman radiating sex and power'

The gothly woman leaned back against Liz's desk and crossed her left leg over the right one.

"Hey . . . Jade West."

I flicked my eyes over to the dean who glared at the back of Jade's head.

Wait a minute . . .

"Jade West as in the Jade who lived in Honeysuckle House?"

"Indeed" she replied smoothly with a smirk on her full lips. " I'm staying right across the road at the Hart Brake Inn-" she grimaced at the name "-which is fine for a day or two, but if I have to stay there much longer I might go into diabetic shock, from the décor if not the food."

Liz stood up at that and walked around the table towards her door.

"Jade please accompany me for coffee? I'll see you later Tori." Liz said standing in the doorway.

"Guess I'm going for coffee." Jade said with an amused smirk on her gorgeously pale face.

She walked up to me and delicately took my hand in hers raising it to her lips and placed a gently kiss on my hand that ran through my body.

"Till later Tori . . ."

"Vega." I finished for her and smiled.

With that they left and I forgot what I was even doing here.

So I returned to my office.

* * *

I hadn't seen the dean or Jade for the rest of the day. Since I walked to college this morning I thought I might as well take a walk around the campus before I head home. From where I was standing I could see the building that housed the Eastern European and Russian Institute.

I recalled the town gossip that Nicky had relayed to me about the professors there. They never went out before dark . . . could they be vampires?

Somehow my mind side tracked and I rememebered one of the poems I had read in Jade's journals, which seems weird now that's she's here. Am I still allowed to read her stuff . . .?

_**What came once here will never come again,**_

_**Neither matter monument nor memory;**_

_**All sun-warmed green succumbs to winter's wind.**_

_**And you, my love, were also my best friend,**_

_**And had your life to live. The tragedy**_

_**Was not just my youth's recklessness, although**_

_**I trusted much to impulse, whim, freedom,**_

_**A destiny excluding doom. Frankly,**_

_**Youth can be out insanity. But now I'm cured**_

_**Of that fever, although the price was high;**_

_**And chilly April wind can only sigh**_

_**At my regrets, yet sun will brighten wind so,**_

_**One knows that soon green stirs, and wild bees hum.**_

_**Summer once more will make winter liar,**_

_**But I wont warm. You're all I'll ever desire.**_

The sound of wings overhead cut short my musing. I looked behind me and saw, a black, winged shape bearing down on me.

I turned and ran down the path. The sound of wings grew louder and I ran faster. At the bottom of the path was a security light above a red campus emergency phone. I wasn't sure how much good a phone call was going to do me.

Stories about vampires turning into winged bat like creatures filled my head.

Something thumped my back. I turned around, raising my hands to cover my face for protection . . . and found myself looking at Jade West.

"Are you alright?" she demanded, her voice hoarse with concern. "I saw you running down the path as if something were after you."

I looked up for the winged beast, but there was nothing but clear blue sky.

Snowflakes clung to Jade's dark hair like stars in the night sky.

"I heard something following me." I didn't tell her that the sound came from the sky. We both turned and looked at the path leading up to Bates Hall. Only one set of footprints stood out in the newly fallen snow.

"I suppose it could have been my imagination." I said, feeling foolish.

"Or it could have been someone in the woods," Jade said. "A student smoking pot or drinking beer who didn't want to get caught by a teacher." I had a feeling she was humoring me, but I didn't care. I also didn't care that she was holding my arm.

I was glad to see her.

"I suppose so, or it could have been an animal." As we turned to walk towards the main part of campus, she tucked my arm under her elbow. "I hadn't realized how isolated this part of campus was. What are you doing here?"

"Well I got a job at the college teaching poetry and I was heading up to talk to Professor Demisovski about an independent project."

"You certainly are very dedicated to students you don't even know," I said. She glanced at me, her lips quirking up I a sideways smile.

"I can't tell if you're making fun of me."

"No I love poetry and dedication. In fact this might seem strange but I remembered one of your poems. I really like it. Especially the last two lines:_Summer once more will make winter liar,__But I wont warm. You're all I'll ever desire."_

She stopped on the path. "You memorized lines of my poem. I'm flattered. Unless you memorized them to make fun of how sappy it is."

"No!" I said, touching her arm. She looked up surprised at the urgency in my voice, and our eyes locked again. Looking into them made me feel a little dizzy. "I memorized those lines because when I read them for the first time I had to read it again immediately . . . and then again and again. I couldn't help but learn it by heart."

She didn't say anything for a moment. I suppose she thought I was a freak reading her stuff over and over again. I wouldn't have blamed her if she walked away in disgust.

"By heart?" she asked, placing her hand over her heart, "I like that phrase. I suppose that makes sense. Thank you."

She reached her hand toward my face and moved a step closer. For a moment I thought she was going to kiss me – I might have leaned a quarter inch closer – but she only brushed some snow from my hair. I shivered as he hand touched my face.

"Come on, you'd better get home before you turn into an ice maiden."

We turned and walked briskly towards Honeysuckle House and Hart Brake Inn. Arms no longer linked.

"You probably want all your books back right?" I asked, desperate to cover my embarrassment at leaning into an imaginary kiss. Had she noticed?

"No, it all belongs to you. I'm tired off all that anyway. Easier to travel without worrying about boundaries plus I've read those books in the library a million times over, the journals are yours to keep as well."

We stopped in the middle of the road between my house and the Inn.

I felt a pang that I'd condemned her to stay at candy land with Diana's sweet tooth.

"Would you like to come in for a drink?" I asked, trying to make my voice sound casual.

"Yes, I'd like that very much." And then leaning close enough that I could feel her warm breath tickling my frozen earlobe, she whispered conspiratorially. "But you have to promise not to serve an cookies or brownies with it. I'm beginning to feel like Gretyl being fattened for the oven by the Wicked Witch."

I laughingly promised not to serve an baked goods and then assured her that Diana, at least, was not a witch.

* * *

**AN: And Jade is human XD BTW writing this while Listening to Blink-182 and Sum41 was IDK? usually more of an Apocalyptica, As I Lay Dying, Attila, Breaking Benjamin, Chimaira, Nightwish, Nine Inch Nails, We Are The In Crowd, Within Temptation and so forth kind of person when writing.**

**watching TLC Strange Sex episodes and being like Damn you people crazy nasty freaks , and not in a good way. . . then watching Taboo TV series , the one with BDSM, Pony Play And Vampirism and being like "wells that's pretty normal :)" lol am I the only one who thinks this way ?**


	12. Chapter 12

I poured two glasses of Jack Daniel's while Jade lit a fire in the library fireplace.

"I see you've added a lot of your books to the library. I know quite a few of them." Jade remarks.

"Yeah. I was really happy about the library. I had to keep my books in storage before. I love having all the space." I said, carefully navigating around the couch and sitting down in the armchair by the fire. She took the opposite chair and I proceeded to tell her about my horrible living conditions before in my small apartment. And I found out that Jade travels quite a lot.

"So, it must be quite hard to maintain a relationship if you travel so often?" I lifted my glass to take another sip of bourbon but found the glass was empty.

Jade picked up the bottle and leaned across to fill my glass. "Not really. I haven't been in a relationship since the time of the dinosaurs I think . . . not exactly anyway . . . it's . . ."

"Complicated?" I suggest when it looked like she wasn't going to finish her sentence.

"I suppose you could say that." She said while smiling over the brim of her glass.

"Would you ever consider staying in one place if you ever find some one worth staying for?" I suddenly asked, not knowing where the question came from. I don't usually invite people over to drink and talk about relationships after I've just met them.

She laughed at that.

She leaned farther forward, her hands braced on her knees. For the second time tonight I thought she was going to try and kiss me . . . but she was getting to her feet.

"Perhaps I should answer that when you're not trying to get me drunk," she said, walking to the door. I followed her, my face flushed with the embarrassment of her accusation.

"I was not trying to get you wasted." I said, opening the door for her. She rocked forward unsteadily on her heels, but this time I had not illusion that she was going to kiss me. She was drunk. I gave her a little push out the door. "Think you can make it across the street?" I joked

"Absolutely!" she assured me. "But you're probably hoping I can't so that you can take me back into the house and take advantage of me right." She playfully nudges me with her shoulder and I stumble a bit, but regain my posture, pushing her by her shoulders down the porch steps.

She weaved across the lawn, leaving a meandering trail of footprints. I watched until she made it across the street up the porch. Then she turned and waved as if she'd known all along that I'd been watching her.

* * *

The next few days were consumed with finals, grades and student conferences. Although I hadn't seen Jade West since the first night of our meeting, there was a faculty holiday party that started at sunset and I'm bound to see her there.

When I got to Briggs hall I stopped in the coatroom in the lobby to shuck off my long down coat and swop my boots for party shoes. While I was trying to tighten the buckle on my right shoe I heard whispering coming from the back of the coatroom. I froze, poised awkwardly on one leg, and listened.

"You would tell me if there was something really wrong, wouldn't you?" a woman's plaintive voice pleaded. I hated eavesdropping on what sounded like a lover's quarrel, but I was afraid that if I moved I would give away my presence. So I listened, waiting for a response, but none came.

"After all, you've known her longer than I have and I'm sure you care for her."

Hmm . . . not a lovers' quarrel then. Perhaps an ménage a trios? I had to admit I was curious now. Stealthily I pushed aside a layer of heavy coats and uncovered Diana Hart standing next to a lady I had seen in a painting at the college somewhere.

"Diana?" I asked, too startled to worry about keeping my presence secret. "Are you okay?"

Diana looked up guiltily, her eyes bloodshot and bleary.

"I'm fi-ine," she warbled, her chin quivering.

"Hi, you must be Tori. I'm the Fairy Queen, Fiona. Diana will be just fine. We'll see you at the party."

I left Diana murmuring to the Fiona and walked toward the main parlor, brushing down my violet dress. My head was down looking for stray hairs, so it wasn't until I was in the doorway that I looked up and saw how the room had been transformed. I'd admired the stately hall the last time I'd been in it, but the heavy drapes had been drawn back, revealing a well glass facing the western mountains. The sun hovered just inches above the highest, turning the sky a brilliant fiery red and the mountains deep violet. Swaths of russets light poured in through the glass, deepening the colors of the Persian rug and turning the oak beams and panels a rich honey gold. It was the painted triptych, though, that was most affected by the light. It seemed to bring the figures to life. The grass and leaves sparkled as if freshly dewed, and the faces of the men and women glowed as though blood flowed through their veins – all but the Fairy Queen, whose face, untouched by the sunlight, remained pale and icy. I was so busy looking at the painting that I hardly noticed the human inhabitants of the party until Soheila Lilly appeared at my side with a glass of champagne for me.

"Beautiful in this light right? We always wait a few moments after the sunset to give the night people a chance to join in . . . ah, here they are now. They must have come in their limo to avoid the sun."

Soheila motioned with her champagne flute towards the doorway. Standing on the threshold were the three Russian studies professors – tall blonde Anton Volkov, back from his conference apparently, petite Rea Deminsovski, and short bald Ivan Klitch.

"Are they really . . .?"

"Shh . . . they don't like the modern terminology. They prefer to be known as night people – or nocturnals."

"But do they . . ." I lowered my voice to a barely audible whisper. "Drink blood?"

Anton's head shot up and snapped in my direction, his cold blue eyes fixed on mine. He was all the way across the room, but I could swear that he'd heard me. He took a step forward but Rea put a restraining hand on his arm.

"Damn," I said, turning to Soheila to ask if she thought he had heard me, but Soheila had left my side. She was standing s few feet away with Elizabeth Book, their heads together, whispering. The dean looked upset at something – the worry weighing down her face. When she looked up at me I was alarmed at how much she had seemed to age. Her eyes, fastened on me, were bloodshot.

When she approached me I was afraid she was going to scold me for offending the resident vampires. Glancing back at the doorway where they hovered behind the bar of red sunlight I could practically feel Anton's bloodlust. He was staring at me as though he'd like to eat me.

"Tori, dear . . ." it was the dean's voice, only so much weaker than her usual tone that I had to look down to check that it was really her . . . and that was another thing. I could have sworn that when I met Dean Book she was my height, but now she was a good two inches shorter than me. Even allowing that I was wearing heels, that was still a lot of height to lose to osteoporosis in a few months.

"I have a favor to ask you."

"I'm sorry if I insulted the Russian studies department, Dean Book. But honestly, how could you have sent me to his office knowing what he is?"

Dean Book looked confused. "Do you mean Professor Volkov? Why, he's a perfect gentleman."

"I think he turned into a bat and chased me!" I hissed.

Liz smiled and shook her head. "You must be mistaken dear. Anton would never . . ."

Soheila interrupted. "We haven't much time, Liz. The door has to be opened before the sunlight is gone."

"Of course, that's what I'm trying to arrange," the dean replied petulantly. And then turning to me and straightening herself up to practically her former height, she asked, "We'd like you to do the honors this year, Tori. It seems fitting since you have shown a talent for opening the real door."

"You want me to open the triptych?"

"Yes, please. Or rather the right side. Fiona always opens the left side. I usually open the right side, but I . . . well, I just don't feel quite up to it today."

It was alarming to hear Liz admit weakness.

"Of course," I said, putting down the champagne glass on a nearby table and walked over the right side of the triptych. Fiona, in a stunning green silk dress, already stood on the left side, one hand resting on the gilt handle at the center of the door.

I smiled at her, resisting the urge to curtsey, and placed my hand on the right side handle.

"You look very nice in that color," Fiona said. "I prefer green though."

_Little dull to wear the same color all the time_, I thought to myself – or at least I thought it was to myself. When I saw Fiona's lips thin with displeasure I realized that my thoughts weren't my own in this company. Now I pissed off a vampire and the fairy queen. I wondered what other supernatural creature I could get on the wrong side of before the end of the night. I glanced around the room – looking for one face in particular. I hadn't seen Jade since I'd arrived. I was just about to give up when I spotted her in the doorway, strutting past the Russians. Anton raised an eyebrow at her as she passed and Rea licked her lips.

Jade, seemingly unfazed by the attention of the vamps, took her place standing in between the other supernatural beings. She caught my eye and winked.

I blushed and looked away . . .

And caught the Fairy Queen staring at her as if she was the last drop of water in the desert.

Fiona began to say something but was interrupted by Liz Book calling the room to order she started talking but I looked back over to Jade who was standing with her back to the window, the last rays of the sun limning her face, throwing her eyes into shadow so I couldn't see her expression.

"We open out hearts to the new love just as we open this door." Liz turned to us and I saw Fiona begin to pull the handle on her side. She could have given me a cue, I thought tugging on my handle. I had a terrible image of the panel breaking in my hands. That would just be my luck; I could piss everyone in one fell swoop.

Then I recalled reading a spell for opening in a spell book.

_Lanuam sprengja_! I said under my breath.

It swung open of its own volition, so swiftly that I was flattened between the panel and the wall. I heard a gasp from the room, which I thought might be for safety, but when I extricated myself. I saw that no one was looking at me. They were looking at the painting . . .

When I turned to the place on the wall where the painting had been I found myself looking through a window at another world. Deep green meadows starred with tiny flowers rolled down to a crystal blue lake surrounded by mountains that faded from indigo to violet to the palest rose and lavender. I stepped forward and instead of dissipating, the illusion deepened. I was at the edge of a dark wood, branches arching far over my head, looking out through the tees to the green meadows and lake beyond. The scene blurred and I realized my eyes were full of tears. A faint buzzing filled my ears, like a million voices whispering or a swarm of flying insects beating their wings together. They grew as they came closer, swelling to almost human size and _almos_t human features. A host of diaphanous glowing figures swarmed around me, their sharp noses sniffing at me, their pointed ears twitching. The buzzing grew louder – the same buzzing I heard when I was younger at the park with Trina . . . then I remembered them. They were the horde I'd travelled with in my dreams. _My companions_.

_Our doorkeeper_! Their high- pitched voices echoed as they stirred excitedly around me. Those who had wings flexed them now and swooped in the air above me. Their wings brushing my face.

_You've come back to us! _They cried in unison. _You've come to let us in!_

But already they were fading just as they had faded in my dream. I reached out to touch one – a young girl with a heart shaped face and skin mottled like a fawn's – and my hand went right through her. Another face took her place emerging out of the dark like a skull bobbing up and out of black water.

* * *

When I turned back around everyone was conversing and I saw the witch, fairy and demon standing together and whispering as they always do.

I looked over to Jade wondering what she had thought of that when I saw she was talking to a tall woman.

I was about to walk over when Anton touched my arm. I looked up at his face and saw that his eyes were really beautiful. They looked like a glacial blue up close and almost reminded me of Jades. – Where was she anyway? Why hadn't she come to rescue me from this vampire? I turned my eyes – they were all that could move – towards the window and found her still talking to the tall woman, who, I saw now, was Fiona. Jade was completely focused on her. That's why she hadn't come to rescue me.

Luckily when I looked back the trio of supernatural creatures came over and said they would like me to meet a few other people. I loved Soheila, Liz and Diana at that moment.

The vampire disappeared and Jade and Fiona were no longer standing by the window – or anywhere else in the room.

I didn't feel much in a party mood anymore. I made for the door when Diana rushed through the door and stood in front of the coatroom. She started to say something but I cut her off.

"I just want to go home, I'm really not feeling to well Diana. Goodnight." I put my hand on the coatroom door and she shrieked.

"Don't go in there! It's . . . locked."

The door did appear locked. But hell, I'd just opened the door to Faerie. What was a coatroom door in comparison? I turned the handle and pressed my shoulder to the door, muttering, _"lanuam sprengja!"_

It opened so suddenly that I fell into the dimly lit room, straight onto a pile of fur . . . that moved.

I leapt back, the coat was thrown to the side and beneath it lay Fiona and Jade, clothes askew and limps entangled.

I opened my mouth, but found I had nothing to say. Jade's eyes, full of guilt, met mine, but before she could say anything I grabbed my coat and fled.

* * *

Not that I had any right to be angry with her. I reminded myself. I had no claim to her. I wasn't angry at Jade. I told myself as I reached the path to the southeast gate, I was angry with myself.

The path was less well shoveled than the ones on the quad – and darker because of the trees overshadowing it. At least the gate was still open. I could see my street beyond it and even the faint glow of my own porch light. I hurried toward it, wanting nothing more than to be in my own home to nurse my wounds in private.

What an idiot! I muttered as I strode down the hill. I let myself develop a schoolgirl crush on Jade West.

A noise behind me cut short my thoughts. It was the same noise I'd heard coming out of Bates Hall – the sound of wings. Could it be Anton, changed into a bat coming back for me?

"Oh hell" I shouted within a yard from the gate.

Immediately the ground beneath me lurched and I fell into a pothole that hadn't been there a moment before. My hands and knees slammed onto the broken icy pavement.

Something heavy and feathery struck my head. I crouched and tried to cover my face. Claws dug into my skin . . . then a hand grasped mine. I looked up and found Jade crouched beside me. The bird – a giant black crow even bigger than the shape I'd seen outside Bates Hall – beat at her face once and then soared out through the gate, cawing harshly as it left.

"Tori are you all right?" Jade's hands were all over me, looking for wounds. There was only one cut on my hand. She tore the sleeve of her black shirt – she wasn't wearing her leather jacket I noticed – and wrapped it around my hand.

"I'm okay," I said – but I wasn't. I was shaking uncontrollably. Jade pulled me to her and wrapped her arms around me. I was shaking to hard to resist.

I burrowed into her arms like an animal burrows into its nest. Around us the woods were dark and cold. Who knew what other horrifying creatures they held? I looked up at Jade and saw that her cheek was streaked with blood. I touched the scratch that had missed her eye by the merest centimeter.

"It could have taken your eye out!"

"I couldn't let it hurt you." She whispered. Then leaned down and pressed her lips on mine.

They were so warm – with the cold and dark creping closer around us they were like a candle burning in the vast dark forest.

I leaned into that heat pouring into me, flooding me, opening the base of my spine and unlocked a door I hadn't known was locked.

But just as I felt that opening I remembered pushing open the door to the coatroom and finding her with Fiona.

I pushed her away.

"Tor-"

"No, don't." I got painfully to my feet, my scraped knees stinging in the cold. When I swayed she reached out for me but I grabbed the gate and she stopped. "Please, you don't owe me an explanation . . . I have to go."

I backed away from her, still holding onto the gate. I wasn't sure I could stand without it. I backed through the gate and let go when I was on the other side. Jade was looking at me, her eyes burning, but she didn't come any closer. Seeing that gave me the strength to stand on my own. I turned around, and started walking towards my house.

I listened for the sound of footsteps – or wings – following but all I heard was the clang of the iron gate closing behind me.


	13. Chapter 13

Why had I gotten so upset about finding Jade and Fiona in the coatroom?

It was none of my business if they wanted to hook up – they really were perfect for each other . . . both irresistible sex beings . . .

But then why had Jade kissed me by the gate?

At the memory of the kiss my limbs loosened . . . and I nearly swerved into the left lane in front of a tractor-trailer. Shaken, I gripped the wheel tighter and glued my eyes to the white lines. The kiss meant nothing, I told myself . . . but _had_ she really kissed me? Twice I'd thought she'd been about to and I'd been wrong. Maybe I kissed her?

The thought was so mortifying that I nearly swerved again. What had come over me lately? First I'd had sex with a succubus – well, I hadn't had much choice about that . . . or had I? There must have been a reason the demon was able to seduce me. Maybe there was something about me that drew her. Something that was unsatisfied.

Well, duh, I've been single since I was in college and I'm 25 now. No wonder I'm unsatisfied. No wonder I was going around seducing succubae and sexy poets. I was becoming "a woman of loose moral standards" as my grandmother would say.

I was driving to see Trina but she'll not make me feel better in any way. I think I'll rather see my best friend Annie.

I was exhausted when I to the 11th floor. My hotel room had a spectacular view of New York Harbor. As soon as I was alone I ran hot water in the capacious tub, adding the lemon scented bath gel that came with the room, shucked off my clothes, and sank into the hot water. I gently sponged the grit from my scrapped knees. Perversely, the pain brought back the memory of Jade's kiss, the heat of her mouth on mine . . .

No, no, no! I told myself, dunking my head under the hot water. I held my breath until the image dissipated, then washed my hair and scrubbed myself with the complementary loofah and lemon shower gel until I banished the image of Jade's face from my head.

* * *

The next day I called Annie to hang out, and an hour later she picked me up at the hotel. Her bakery van was warm and smelled like fresh baked bread. Annie give me a bone-crunching hug that left me covered with flour and thawed the ice in my heart for the first time in 24 hours. I promptly burst into tears.

"Spill it!" Annie ordered, pulling into traffic.

I turned to face Annie. "When you first got together with Maxine I barely saw you for six months."

Annie raised one dark eyebrow, but kept her eyes on the road as she turned onto Canal Street. "True," she said. "So is that why I've barely heard from you these last three months? You've been having great sex with someone new?"

I began to splutter a denial, but one cool look from Annie silenced me.

"Sort of," I answered. "It depends on how you define sex."

"Well, hello Bill Clinton!" Annie grinned. "And you've been keeping this from me because I'm so conservative and judgmental?"

"No, I've been keeping this from you because you'll think I'm crazy."

We'd pulled up in front of the Bowery Mission. Annie turned to me and shook her head. "Sweetie, who did I go to when I was thirteen and realized I liked girls better than boys? Who told me I wasn't crazy, I was just gay?"

I returned her smile. "I'm afraid it's more complicated, but if you're sure you want to hear it . . ."

Annie crossed her eyes at me. "Complicated, crazy, unbelievable sex? Please honey, start talking."

And so I did. From the Bowery to Chelsea to Hell's Kitchen and the upper West Side, I told her everything that had happened at Fairwick from the first visitation of the succubus to her banishment and about all the creatures – the witches, fairies, vampires and the tantalizing glimpse I'd had of the world of Faerie through the triptych door. She listened in silence, her lips pursed, her eyes focused on the city traffic, opening her mouth only to hurl invectives at an S.U.V. with New Jersey plates that cut her off. I finished just as we reached our last stop. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

She switched the engine off and turned to me. I was expecting her to tell me that I needed to get professional help. Knowing Annie, she'd offer to go with me and support me in any way she could. But all she said was,

"Come with me. There's something I need to show you."

She asked two of the helpers if they wouldn't mind unloading the bread (they didn't), and took me up a flight of back stairs to the cathedral. While at grad school at Columbia I'd gotten into the habit of visiting the massive, unfinished Episcopalian cathedral. I didn't consider myself religious, but I liked the peace of the hushed, vaulted space and the beauty of the stained glass windows. I liked, too, the Cathedral's philosophy of inter-action with the modern world.

It was to the Italian chapel – St. Ambrose's – that Annie now took me.

"Did you know I used to come here to pray when we were in high school?" she asked as we entered the ornate, Renaissance-style chapel.

"No," I said, sitting down beside her on a folding chair. "I thought you gave up the church in the eighth grade."

"The _Catholic_ church," she said, folding her hands and looking up at the altar. "I figured why should I keep going to a church that told me I was going to hell because of what I was? But after a while I missed something – a feeling I'd gotten at Mass sometimes, you know?"

She looked at me, an uncharacteristically uncertain look on her face, and I realized she was embarrassed. We talked plenty about our sex lives, but never about religion.

"Yeah," I said, "I think I know what you mean. I used to come to the Cathedral between classes – for cultural and art history reasons, I'd tell myself – but also for the feeling I got sitting here."

"Huh, so we're both closet church groupies and we never knew it." She grinned, looking more like the self-assured Annie I knew. "I came to this chapel in particular because it's dedicated to an Italian saint. I figured it was one thing to give up being a Catholic, and another to give up being _Italian_."

_"Dio mio!"_ I exclaimed in mock horror. "Perish the thought!" and then, in a more serious voice, I asked. "Did you really think you'd have to give up being Italian because you're gay?"

"I know it sounds stupid, but I didn't know what – or who – I might have to give up. I was relieved that I didn't have to give up my best friend" she gave my hand a quick squeeze " but you know I didn't tell my mother until I was 16. The day I was going to tell her I came here first. I prayed that my mother wouldn't be too upset and that I wouldn't lose my temper if she was, and that she wouldn't stop . . . loving me." Annie's voice broke on the last words and I reached over and gave her hand I squeeze I interlaced our fingers, and kept a hold of it while she continued. "So I'm sitting here and this old woman comes in and sits down next to me. She looks like your typical Italian nonna. Black dress, black kerchief tied over her hair, which was grey, a widow's hump the size of a basketball, no teeth. She was muttering something under her breath when she came in, some prayer I figured, although it didn't sound like Italian or English or even Latin. Anyway, we're both sitting here and after a couple of minutes she puts her hand on mine, and says to me, 'There's nothing to be afraid of Anne Marie. Your mother loves you for who you are and she will always love you.' I started to ask her how she knew what I was afraid of – did she know me? – But when I turned a light behind her, from the window, blinded me I thought; only it was an overcast day. I could still see her silhouetted against the light, but she was not longer stooped and old and her hair was long and shiny white. Then I looked away for a moment and she was gone. Lying in the chair where she'd been was this . . ."

Annie removed from her pocket a small, round, white stone. It was worn away in the center so that one edge formed a slender crescent.

"I took it with me and held it in my hand when I told my mother I was gay. You know what she said, right?"

" 'Better you should like women than be a _puta_ like your cousin Esta,' " I said, repeating the line Annie told me years ago when we had our first official date as a couple.

"And then she hugged me and scolded me for not telling her sooner. The woman was right. My mother never loved me any less . . ." Annie wiped her eyes. Sylvana Mastroanni had died of breast cancer when Annie was 18. "I've always believed that old woman was some kind of angel . . . or maybe, after hearing what you've told me, a fairy or an ancient goddess. So I believe that you've ended up at a college for witches and fairies." She smiled. "Hell, I'm not even surprised. You always were a little . . . different."

"Thanks!" I said, swatting her on the arm. "You make me sound like a head case."

"No, I didn't mean it like that. It's just that your back ground – dead parents, crazy aunt, frosty, forbidding grandmother . . ."

"My grandmother wasn't that bad," I interrupted, thinking guiltily that I ought to call her tomorrow. "And she did her best for a 60 year old woman suddenly saddled with an obnoxious pre-teen on weekends and holidays."

"Okay, okay, I meant no disrespect to Adelaide. I'm just pointing out that you always had the set-up to turn into the one of those over dramatized women in those gothic novels you always used to read."

Annie dropped me back off at the Hotel and said, I should call more and visit her and Maxine sometime.

* * *

The next day at the hotel I called my grandmother and got her voicemail. I said I was town and then hung up. Ten minutes later the phone rang.

"So you're in town." My grandmother said without a hello. "Have you finally come to your senses and left that second-rate college?"

"No, Adelaide." She had dispensed with me calling her Grandma when I was 10 because she said it made her feel old. "I'm just in town for a few days . . ."

"Good," she cut me off briskly. "So am I. I'm staying at The Grove Club. If you don't have any other plans for the day we could have tea here."

For a moment I considered telling her I was going to Annie's. I hated admitting to her that I was friendless, but then I realized that she was apparently alone – and lonely enough to be checking her home voicemail by remote – and chided myself for my selfishness.

"I'd love to," I told her.

"Come at one," she answered crisply. "And remember, the Grove Club doesn't allow jeans."

I hung up, feeling like a sulky teenager who had to be reminded to dress properly for her college interviews, and remembering why I always tried to keep my interactions with my grandmother brief.

I dressed carefully in a skirt and cashmere sweater and put my hair up, recalling that Adelaide always commented on how long it was if I left it down.

While I waited I thought how I would phrase a question like – who was a fairy, my mom or dad? - To Adelaide.

"Miss Vega?" an Asian man in a dove grey suit had appeared soundlessly next to me. He waved his white-gloved hand "Adelaide is waiting for you over here,"

I followed him across the room. When we reached the chairs by the fire, my escort bowed to me and backed away.

"Adelaide?" I asked, addressing the back of the chair.

A gnarled hand grasped the wooden chair arm, which was carved like a bird's talons, and began pulling her up.

"Don't get up," I said, edging around in front of the chair and leaning down to plant a kiss on my grandmother's cheek, the familiar scent of Chanel No. 5 hit my nasal cavities.

When I pulled back I'd been preparing myself for her to look older. After all I last saw her at my high school graduation, but except for her hands, she didn't look any older than 60.

"You look great," I said truthfully. "The southwestern climate must suite you."

She waved her hand, the fingers remaining curled, to dismiss the compliment.

"Sit down. You're making me nervous hovering there."

I sat down in the chair across from her, perching on the edge rather than settling back in its recessed depths. The Asian man reappeared with a tray, which he placed on the table in front of us, filling two cups of tea, before leaving.

"You're looking well," she admitted grudgingly. "Although I don't see how that damp, cold upstate climate can agree with anyone."

"I don't mind it," I said. "The campus is very pretty in the snow . . ." unbidden an image of Jade kissing me on the snowy path above the southeast gate flashed before my eyes. "And I have a lovely Victorian house. You should come visit . . ."

"I can't abide those drafty old Victorian houses," she said, ignoring my invitation. "And those small college towns . . ." she shuddered; a movement that made her collarbones stand out against her neck. "It must be like living in a fishbowl, everybody knowing your business."

My grandmother, I recalled, had always maintained a meticulous layers of privacy between the compartments of her life. She never socialized.

"I like that part," I said, "People look out for one another, like Sinjin Van-"

"Sinjin van Cleef? Is that one of your colleagues at the college?"

"No," I said, lifting teacup to my lips, "he's the realtor who sold me Honeysuckle House and he's friends with the dean, Liz Book . . ."

"Elizabeth Book? Is she still there? She must be ancient. How do you get on with her?"

I looked up from my teacup, surprised.

"How do you know Liz Book? You didn't mention it when I told you I got the job." _A second-tier college with a second-rate staff_, is what she had said then.

"Our paths have crossed. I always found her a bit . . . diffuse, and perilously naïve. That whole philosophy the school practices of recruiting students from all over when there are plenty of qualified young people right here." She tapped the arm of her chair as if she literally meant right here, and I looked around the muted parlor as if candidates for admission were going to pop out of the chairs.

"I had no idea you were so well acquainted with Fairwick." I put down my teacup and leaned forward. "Just how well acquainted are you anyway, Adelaide?"

Her gray eyes widened at the direct question and she retreated further into the shelter of her wing-backed chair, but then she smiled, her thin lipstick-red lips parting.

"Quite well acquainted. I see you've been initiated into their little cult. Tell me, did they promise to train you to be a witch?"

"You know about that?" I asked, my voice shrill in the hushed room. Normally I would have struggled to remain composed in front of grandmother.

Adelaide looked surprisingly pleased at my reaction.

"Of course I know, dear. What do you think the Grove is?" she waved a crooked hand to indicate the gloomy room.

"You're . . . witches?" I whispered.

"The Grove is an old name for a coven, from when our ancestors met in the forest. But just because our ancestors had to lurk around dark, cold forest doesn't mean we do. The membership of the Grove practices a more refined version of the Craft."

I thought about the rite Soheila, Liz and Diana had held to cast out the succubus from my house. It hadn't been refined, but it had worked. But then they hadn't all been witches . . .

"Do you know about fairies, too?"

Adelaide clucked her tongue disapprovingly. "The Grove does not admit fairies, gnomes, elves or dwarves. We consider dependence on such creatures a sign of poor discipline in the Craft. I mean would you want _your daughter_ to sit next to a fairy or hobgoblin or phouka in a classroom?"

Well there's my question answered, my dad was obviously a fairy and my mom a witch like Adelaide.

"I really like my students," I said, shocked by the venom in Adelaide's voice. "And I haven't seen any hobgoblins . . . "

"That you know of. What we at the Grove hear is that Book allows _otherworlders_ to attend and teach in human guise. Who knows what sort of creatures you've got in your classes! I wanted to warn you when you took the job, but you've never listened to me."

"But you never even told me I had fairy blood!"

Adelaide leaned forward and grabbed my hand so quickly I gasped aloud.

"Of course I didn't tell you or Trina that you had the taint of the fey. Your mother, although she never chose to practice the Craft, was descended from a long line of witches. She disgraced her heritage by marrying a man with fairy blood. The fairy blood cancelled out Trina's powers, I'm shocked you can even practice the arts."

"What heritage?" I asked, ignoring the slight to my father. I'd always known my grandmother didn't like him.

"The heritage of the Grove. One of its tenets is that we do not associate with fairies."

I snorted. "But witches have been the victims of prejudice and persecution for centuries. Why would you be intolerant of fairies?"

"It was the association of witches with demons – which is just another name for what you call fairies – that brought about the persecution. Now that you know about Fairwick I hope you are going to resign."

"And what if I don't resign?" I asked. "What will your club do to me?"

"You always were so dramatic, Tori." She shook her head and smiled, almost fondly, as though at a small pet's misbehavior. "The Grove won't do anything to you, but . . ." her smile vanished. "Neither will we help you if you are in danger there. And trust me, sooner or later, you will be in danger there."

I thought of the succubus who had nearly wrecked my house and the winged creature attack.

What I hated about fighting with my grandmother was that she often made a good point and turned out to be right. But she wasn't always right. She had discouraged my relationship and friendship with Annie (that little Italian girl) and told me not to write a book about vampires, "because vampires had gone out after Anne Rice." I had to hope she was wrong about this. Even though I had seriously considered resigning on the drive down to the city, I knew that it was the last thing I wanted to do now. In fact I can't wait to get back.

"You always told me to rely on myself,' I said, rising to my feet. "So that's what I'm going to do. And if you and you club ever change your mind about Fairwick, the door is always open." When I uttered the last four words Adelaide's face turned to ashen.

"The door is open?" she repeated hoarsely.

So there was one thing she didn't know.

"Yes," I said, smiling. "I opened it." Then I turned and walked away.

* * *

AN: Hi there. So I probably won't update until like next week maybe? I have this Elizabethan Theatre project for Drama class, the Elizabethan Superstitions are totally Hilarious and the 4 Humors they believed in XD. And I have to start Rehearsals for the Play my class is doing in June. It's called Success by Nick Drake. My character is Nick Shadow . . . trust my drama teacher to make the Alternative girl in the class the bad , evil guy in the play. My character is kinda like The Joker from Batman . . . its pretty weird and I have like so many monologues in the play ! And the guy who plays Tom in the play is taller than me and I have to lean on him pat him on the back and over power him when i'm 5'6 and he's like 6'3 … my teacher thought this out well . . . . I swear my drama teacher is exactly like Sikowitz . We're always doing these sexual exersices in class . . . like on thursday she was like "stick your tongues out and move them really fast side to side"-thats to stretch vocal muscles. And then she bent over waving her ass in my face and started slapping her ass and was like "When you do the spiral roll you have to feel the stretch here *slaps her ass 3 times*" and my friend Tristan started making sexual faces and pretending to slap her ass, we both started laughing , its just he was laughing so hard he started crying so she made him run 4 laps around the art quad at college.

anyway that's enough from me ^.^


	14. Chapter 14

AN: I said I wouldn't update but I needed a damn distraction and break from Chemistry . . . So . . . This is sweet and short, short and sweet? IDK.

* * *

I turned right up the hill that climbed to my house and saw that most houses on my street were dark, too. Oddly, though, the woods to my right weren't completely dark. Lights flickered through the trees. I was staring into the woods when an enormous antlered buck bolted right in front of my wheels.

I slammed on the brakes. The car spun completely around, ploughed into the woods and pitched down into a gully. I ended up at the tilt, my headlights tearing a crooked path through the snowy woods. I stared dumbly into it, too rattled to move, watching the snow fall through my high beams. Then I looked for Ralph.

He was a pet mouse I bought in New York to keep me company.

He was on the floor of the backseat, puffed up like a dandelion seed head, a crumpled post-it note sticking to his right hind leg, but otherwise he looked okay.

"Thank god we weren't hurt," I said, "but I think we're going to have to walk from here."

I turned off the engine and lights. Darkness enveloped the car. I was tempted to turn the lights back on. I checked the glove compartment for a flashlight, but there wasn't one. Then I put Ralph in my pocket and got out.

The dome light briefly showed how close I was to hitting a tree, and then I closed the door and found myself in the darkness again. Not total darkness though. There was light coming from somewhere, probably the street, I guessed, but the gully I'd landed in was so deep I couldn't see the streetlights.

Nor could I climb back up the way I had come because the slope was too steep on that side. I'd have to walk parallel to the street until the slope leveled. Sooner or later I would run into my house, which was at the top of the hill on this side of the road.

I locked the car and started trudging uphill. Ten minutes later I was freezing. I lifted my head and squinted through the driving snow. Yes, I could see small twinkling lights up ahead. Had I left lights on? Or maybe Robbie came to check on the house and left them on to welcome me home.

_Casa, heima, teg._

I quickened my pace, stamping my feet with every step to shake warmth into them. Soon coming out into a clearing, I recognized my own front yard. Honeysuckle House was twenty yards away, my front porch light shining through the snow. I struck out for it, breaking into a clumsy run, but then something hit my head.

I turned and met the yellow eyes of an enormous black bird. I ducked and flung my arm up to protect my face. The bird screeched horribly when I hit it and beat the air with its huge black wings, like a swimmer treading water. Its yellow eyes latched on to me.

Then it gathered itself for another dive.

I crouched and covered my face, sure it meant to pluck my eyes, steeling myself for its talons and beak tearing into flesh. But instead I heard a hollow thwack followed by the bird's outraged scream and then the heavy beat of its wings. I uncovered my face and looked up at the figure towering above me, her back to me. Black feathers clung to her shoulders blending in with her hair. When she turned, the feathers drifted to the ground.

I looked up again half expecting, half fearing those yellow eyes would still be there. That the bird transformed into this bloodied, feathered woman, but the eyes regarding me were the soft blue eyes of Jade West. I felt like singing the line from Halestorm's song Blue Eyes that went 'hello blue eyes, I will sing your distorted lullabies, la, la, la, la….'

"Bloody hell, Vega!" she said, crouching down in front of me, "What did you do to piss off that bird?" her voice was shaking. I saw she was clutching a scissors that she had used to fend off the bird. It was matted with blood and feathers.

"Jade, how did you know . . .? What are you doing here?"

"I was sitting in my room at the window listening to music when I saw someone in the woods. When you came out onto the lawn I saw it was you – and then I saw that crazy crow come out of the woods behind you. You know, I think it was the same one that attacked you the day you left . . . only it looks like it's grown . . ."

She faltered and I wondered if she, too, was remembering what had happened the last time she'd rescued me from the bird – how we'd kissed and I pulled away.

She reached out and touched my face, and I started to shake.

"You're half frozen," she said, grabbing my hands and pulling me up. "We've got to get you inside. Do you have your key?"

I patted my pockets and realized that not only was the key gone but so was Ralph.

"No!" I cried, scanning the blood-speckled snow. When had he fallen out? Had the monster crow gotten him?

"Don't worry, you've probably got one stashed away. Most people hereabout do, I've found. Let me guess – under this wee gnome perhaps?"

She'd helped me up to the front of the house and sat me down on the porch steps while she tilted back the stoned gnome that had come with the house.

"Ha! I knew it!" she cried holding up a key. "Come on now, don't cry. It's just the shock of being attacked by that nasty bird."

I wasn't crying from shock – or at least not just from shock – but because I'd lost Ralph in the attack. Even if the bird hadn't gotten him he'd freeze to death if he didn't get inside soon. I had to look for him.

I got up and started to walk back across the snow, but I only got a few feet before a wave of dizziness overcame me and I sank to the ground. I heard Jade's boots coming down the porch steps and felt her arms hauling me back to my feet.

"Where do you think you're going, Vega?"

"Um . . . I forgot something in the car . . . I have to go back."

"You're delirious, which is one of the signs of hyperthermia. You're going inside now."

Jade carried me up the steps and into the house. I began to explain about Ralph, not caring anymore if she thought I was nuts.

"A pet mouse? What a strange woman you are, Tori Vega. But don't you worry. Wild animals know how to take care of themselves. He'll go to the ground until the snow stops then he'll find your scent."

She sat me down on the library couch and crouched beside the hearth where logs lay ready for a fire. She set a fire as she talked, her voice a soothing patter – like raindrops falling – but I couldn't stop crying.

It wasn't just Ralph anymore. It was everything that happened: my grandmother, missing my parents, crashing my car, getting attacked . . . it all bubbled up inside me now and spilled out in a long wrenching sob. I told Jade all of it and somehow I managed to throw in finding her with Fiona.

"That hussy," she said, wrapping a knit throw around my shoulders. "She asked me to get something for her and then she was all over me. Don't worry about her . . . or your _eejit_ grandmother. You're home now." She knelt in front of me and pulled off my sodden boots and socks and rubbed my feet, her hands incredibly warm against my chilled flesh.

"It's okay," she whispered, her voice as warm as her hands. "You've had a bad time of it, but it's okay now, you're home."

She slipped her hands up under my jeans and chafed my calves, bringing the blood back to my legs. I felt the warmth of them stealing up my legs.

She let go of my calves and sat on the couch beside me. She stroked my matted hair back from forehead and brushed the tears away from my face. Her eyes were like a warm sky. Staring into them I felt myself growing dizzy, like I had when I'd stared into the swirling snow. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to my cheekbone. When she leaned back her lips were wet with my tears. She leaned in again and touched her lips against my earlobe, and then to the top of my jaw. I stayed perfectly still, feeling her breath moving over my face, then down my throat and along my collar bone, the warmth of her lips and breath spreading heat throughout my body. She unbuttoned the top two buttons of my blouse and grazed her lips across the top of my breasts. I started to tremble. She lifted her head and looked into my eyes.

"It's okay," she said, stroking my face. "You're home now."

She pressed her mouth against mine, opening my lips with hers. I felt her tongue inside me, then her breath, then the heat of her body pressing me down into the couch, our breasts messed together perfectly, her legs moving mine apart as deftly as her lips had opened my lips.

That's what her kiss felt like – _an opening_. Her hands moved inside my shirt and down below the waistband of my jeans, her fingers moving between my legs.

"Jade," I moaned.

She shifted her weight to the inside of the couch and withdrew her hand, but left it resting flat on my belly.

"Yes, Tori." She said, as if we'd been in the middle of a conversation, as if we'd known each other all our lives.

"I'm afraid . . ." my voice came out breathless and husky. "We're . . . going . . . too fast."

"Too fast?" she asked, tilting her head, her mouth forming a smirk. "I'm sorry. I'll go slower. How's this?"

She dipped her head to my clavicle and ran her tongue along my throat and up to the lobe of my ear at exactly the same excruciatingly slow pace as she drew her fingers down from my naval to the inside of my thighs. Then she exhaled on the wetness on my ear at the same time as she slipped her fingers between my legs, so that it felt exactly as if her lips were where her fingers were. She pulled the lobe of my ear between her lips, grazing the flesh with her teeth, and sucked on it as her fingers slid inside me.

"How's that?" she breathed into my ear. "Still too fast?"

"No," I admitted, turning to her and twining my hands around her hips to pull her to me. "That was exactly right."


	15. Chapter 15

AN: Two atoms are walking down the street. One says to the other"Hey i think i lost an electron!" the other says"Are you sure?" first one replies"Yes i'm absolutely positive." … oh god I'm lame . . . anyone watch Victoria Justice Live Chat ? she didn't answer my "Top or bottom" question ...

* * *

True to her promise, that first time we made love was long and deliciously – almost maddeningly – slow.

By the end I felt she had touched every millimeter of my body with her mouth or fingers – and I often couldn't tell which had touched me where. But what I remember best about that night was waking up in bed and finding her watching me, her body carved marble in the moonlight, her eyes silver.

As soon as my eyes opened she kissed me with so much passion and desire that I was instantly wet from the kiss.

She was always the most thoughtful and generous of lovers, always giving me pleasure first before she would allow me to touch her. But whenever I recalled that swift kiss, wherever I was – standing in front of a class or walking down a grocery aisle – my knees went watery at the memory of her desire for me.

It was the moment that sealed us.

* * *

When we awoke the next morning she was already thinking of ways to please me. She'd sneaked into the Hart Brake Inn – where she was staying alone since Diana had gone to Liz's – and brought back supplies to make a huge breakfast of banana pancakes, fresh fruit, eggs and coffee. She brought it all to me on a tray with a single rose.

"Did you steal the rose, too?" I asked.

"Ah, that I found in an enchanted wood, the last rose growing in the garden of a ruined castle."

"Hmm," I said, sniffing the rose. It didn't smell like a hothouse flower – it smelled of summer. "Just like in _Beauty and the Beast_. I love the Cocteau version."

She grinned. "I _know _you do – it's listed on your favorites. Let's watch it later."

I'd been afraid to mention 'later', not wanting to assume we'd be spending our _later_ together, but Jade made no pretense about wanting to spend every minute she could with me.

We spent that first day in bed, letting the still raging blizzard serve as our excuse for not budging, although in truth I think that even if the sun had been shining we would have found an excuse to stay in bed that first day. But the next day I awoke to a bed empty except for long swaths of cold sunlight twisted in the sheets.

I felt a pang of loss as sharp as the crystalline light reflected off the icicles hanging from my bedroom windows, and for a moment I wondered if I'd dreamed the last day and a half. It felt like a dream, more incredible than the nights with the succubus. Maybe the succubus was real and Jade was the dream . . .

But then I heard boots stomping in front of the house. I went to one of the front bedrooms and looking out the window, found Jade kicking the snow off her boots with two cups of coffee in her hands.

She looked up at the sound of the sash opening and winked, her cheeks glowing a pink from the cold. How could I have thought she was a dream? She looked more real than anything I could ever imagine.

I made breakfast that day and later we put on heavy boots and hiked down the hill to meet Triple A at my car. It turned out that the tow truck was owned by Robbie and when he heard I had made a service call he rushed down.

He looked a little surprised to see Jade there, but Jade explained that she'd seen me walking down the hill to the car and offered to stay with me while I waited for the tow truck. Robbie squinted suspiciously at Jade, and kept looking back and forth between us, as if he suspected that Jade was holding me captive.

"I thought he was going to tackle me," Jade admitted after the car had been winched out of the gully and towed away.

"He's just being protective," I told her. But I too wondered why Robbie had seemed so wary of Jade.

Since we didn't have a car we hiked to the Stop &amp; Shop. The only store open in town, and bought groceries. Later we borrowed two pairs of cross-country skis from the inn and skied through the woods, making new tracks in the deep virgin snow.

The woods still scared me a little after being attacked by the giant crow, but with Jade blazing the track ahead of me I told myself that nothing bad would happen and nothing did.

The woods were silent, hushed by the deep mantle of snow. Whatever creatures had stirred free through the door between the worlds, they had all gone to ground now.

As did we. For the next few days we marooned ourselves in Honeysuckle House. The heat we made steamed the bedroom windows and then the steam froze, sealing us in.

"It feels like the ice age had come and we're the only two people left in the world," I said one night as we lay in bed, my head pillowed on her chest, my finger tracing the outlines of her tattoo.

"Would that be so bad?" Jade asked.

I laughed and looked up to see whether she was serious, but she was looking towards the window and her face, a white profile against the shadows had no more emotion than a bust carved out of marble.

"We can't go on like this forever," I said, trying to make my voice light but hearing a tremor in it.

She turned to me her eyes twin dark wells in her face.

"I could," she said fiercely. She shifted her hips and pinned me beneath her in one quick fluid movement that made me gasp. We just made love less than an hour ago.

She stretched both of my arms over my head and wrapped my hands around the bedpost.

"Hold on," she whispered, kissing my hands. Her breath was a silken sash that bound my wrist to the bedpost. She pressed her mouth to the inside of my wrist and ran her tongue down my arm.

"I could tie you to this bed and make love to you forever," she whispered into my clavicle. She pressed a line of kisses down my chest that seemed to seal me to the bed. I felt myself sink deeper into the mattress and clutched the bedpost harder to keep from sinking.

She tongued my naval and my back arched as if pulled by a thread connected to her mouth. She was spinning a web around me with her lips, each word and kiss binding me.

"I could _devour_ you," she said, breathing into the cleft between my legs.

She really means it, I thought, arching my hips to meet her mouth. She could devour me. But as her tongue slipped inside me I understood that I didn't care. She could tie me to this bed, lick me dry and pound my bones into dust and I'd still cry out for more – as I was now, crying out in the empty house where the snow muffled the sounds and locked us in together, snow bound.

I woke the next morning with aching arms and that prickly sensation of having done something I should be embarrassed about but couldn't remember – a feeling I recalled from drunken nights in college.

Jade lay asleep beside me, her face angelic in sleep – an angel who'd told me last night that she wanted to tie me up and eat me.

It wasn't really bondage, I thought, rubbing my wrists. And even if it had been – well, there wasn't anything wrong with that. Plenty of consenting adults engage in far wilder games. But I never had, and something about the abandon I'd felt – the willingness to give myself over – made my stomach feel hollow now.

I slipped out of bed quietly, so as to not wake Jade, and went downstairs. I felt like I had to reconnect to the world somehow, so I opened my laptop and checked my email while I started the coffee machine.

I had 283 unread emails.

"Shit," I swore, scrolling through my inbox. When was the last time I had gone this long without checking my email? How long has it been? What day was it?

Most of the messages were easily disposable but there was one from Annie. I poured my coffee before opening it.

_Just wanted to make sure you're okay 3 Annie._

"What's that symbol mean?"

I jumped at the sound of Jade's voice. She was standing right behind me.

"You scared me!" I yelped. "I didn't hear you come down."

"You were pretty engrossed," she replied, tilting her chin towards the screen. "What does it mean? Is it a math symbol? Is Annie a math person?"

"You know it's not polite to read other people's emails," I said, more testily than I'd meant to.

Jade flinched. "I didn't think we had secrets from each other. I thought . . ." she looked again at the screen and a look of understanding crossed her face. Her jaw muscle clenched. "I see now. It's supposed to represent a heart. Is that her idea of romance? Sending you a heart cobbled together of signs and numbers?"

"She just wanted to make sure I was okay," I said, ignoring her critique of Annie's heart. Truth was, I'd always thought the heart emoticon was a little goofy, but I didn't like the idea of laughing at Annie with Jade. It seemed disloyal – and petty of Jade.

"And are you?" Jade asked, narrowing her eyes at me. "Okay?"

"Of course I'm okay," I replied. "I guess maybe I just need a little . . . space."

Jade blanched and looked away.

"Space? I see. Well, I can give you that."

She left the room so quickly it was as if she'd vanished. I could hear her pounding up the stairs, though. If only she'd made that much noise when she came down before – but I shouldn't have to hide an email from an ex-girlfriend and best friend. She was being ridiculous, I told myself as I heard her thumping down the stairs. And if she were this possessive after a week together, what would she be like in a long-term relationship?

The sound of the front door opening made something hurt inside my chest. Was she really going to storm out without saying good-bye?

_What a baby_, I told myself, gripping the seat of my chair with my hands to keep from running to the door.

I was still listening for the door to close when she appeared at the kitchen door. I let out my breath and unclenched my hands to wipe away a tear before she saw it, but she was at my side, kneeling and kissing the tear away, telling me she was sorry, before my hand could reach my face.

"I am such an idiot," she said, lifting me from the chair and pushing me onto the kitchen table – and closing the laptop on Annie's suddenly inadequate heart cobbled together of signs and numbers.

* * *

AN: Aww those Jori moments XD so I saw Asking Alexandria live on Friday, and thanks to my friend. I might be getting sick thanks to his constant breathing in my face and hovering near me. Anyway I finished my assignments Booyah! and I learned the first half of my lines and cues for the play. No script allowed at rehearsals from monday. Wonder what wacky exercises my teacher will make us do this week , like its nice to have drama class in the morning its a fun way to start the day Mon-Friday but it's having to suffer with her craziness in my face double on Thursday , the morning and afternoon , what's really awkward is when she turns both air cons on in the afternoon and her nipples stiffen and its just like LOOK AT MY NIPPLES I'M COLD BUT I WONT TURN THE A/C OFF… but it's hilarious so what the hell.

I think my AN are way long but you don't have to read this. So someone I used to like who's in my drama class and everywhere I go in college told me the beginning of this year that she likes me, well she told my best friend first then me but anyway so I came out to my parents because I wanted to be in a serious relationship with her and stuff and then I was away from college for like 3 days and I get back and she's dating this senior dude who also does drama and now when we go to the theatre with the drama class they are all touchy and blegh. The crap part is that her name is the name of one of the victorious characters/character in this fic and now it's so shit having to write that name. To think about it she's kinda like the character in victorious herself, just with more piercings, dyed red hair, 5 months out of rehab and lesbian moms. She was at Asking Alexandria as well and she hangs out in the smoking section at college so there is no way of avoiding her, So I just need you guys to tell me she's a bitch so that I can get over this. Awesome. I'll just go back to being Asexual.

Questions are welcomed

Please do review chapters btw even if its like one word... like "Crap" or "Nice"


	16. Chapter 16

AN: Hey. I honestly love Jade's jealousy. Its cute in a psychotic manner.

"This crap was nice"- lol you smarticle particle. :D

Q&amp;A to some of them.. others will be answered in the story if I don't answer them here.

What is the precise relationship between Jade and the demon?

Jade is the demon as the story progresses we'll see Tori put all the signs together and figure that out and confront Jade or she could possibly ignore the signs all together. I mean come on she hasn't even questioned how Jade is still the same age as she was 20 years ago when she "left" the house, or how Jade is always around when she needs help.

What role will Robbie be playing?

He's not going to have a big role in this, but there will be one more thing i'll need him for in the story which could change the story for the best or worst, i'm still undecided about it.

A neutron walks into a restaurant and orders a couple of drinks at the bar. As she is about to leave she asks the waiter how much she owes. The waiter replies, "For you, no charge!"

* * *

Jade was penitent all that day.

She disappeared for a while, telling me that she was giving me my 'space.' When she got back, just before dusk, she said she had a surprise for me. She got out our borrowed skis and told me to follow her. Instead of taking one of the trails we had skied before, she set off down the path that led to the honeysuckle thicket. We hadn't gone this way – and neither had anyone else.

I followed in her tracks, glancing nervously into the thicket on either side. Somewhere in this thicket was the door to Faerie. Wouldn't the creatures come out? What if we got between them and the door? What if, somehow, we went trough the door?

"Hey," I called Jade, "It's getting dark. Don't you think we should head back? We could get lost."

"We can't get lost," she called back over her shoulder without stopping. "We just have to follow our tracks back, plus I know these woods very well."

We skied on, Jade going so fast that I broke a sweat keeping up with her. The last thing I wanted was to lose sight of her and find myself alone in these woods in the dark. But as the light began to fade from the sky, turning first clear lavender tinged with mauve, I was distracted by how beautiful the woods were at this time of day.

The snow reflecting the fading light took on an opalescent sheen. The last light caught in the net of tangled honeysuckle and hung there heavy as dusky grapes in a net. I could feel the weight of that purple light, hanging on the verge of night and then spilling over, casting violet shadows on the frozen crust.

Just as the last light faded, the narrow path ended and we came into a clearing. Jade had moved to one side, side stepping with her skis so that I could stop at the edge of the clearing without disturbing the surface of the snow.

It was a perfect circle. Branches of sprawling shrubs arched overhead, forming a ribbed vault. At the opposite side from where we stood, two trees leaned together forming a narrow arch. Like a doorway.

"I knew this place would look perfect in the snow. Look . . ."

She pointed toward the opening in the trees and for a moment I thought, _something is coming_.

Something _was_ coming through the door. The gap between the trees filled with white light, cold and pure as the moonlight that had carried the succubus across my bedroom floor to me. I suddenly felt afraid, but more for Jade than myself. I turned to her. Her face was so still and white that for a moment I had a presentiment of her death. This is what she'd look like dead, I thought, and felt a pain that seemed to cleave me in two.

I reached for her . . . and saw that my usually tan hands were white, too.

I turned back and saw that _something had_ come through the door. The full moon was rising directly in the gap between the trees, spilling its light into the clearing and turning the circle of snow into a silver disk – a mirror into which the moon gazed and fell in love with its own reflection.

"It's beautiful . . ." I said, turning back to Jade, but fell silent when I saw her face. "Jade, what is it?"

"I wanted to bring you here because I knew how beautiful it would be tonight with the snow and the full moon . . . that it would be perfect, just as this last week has been . . . or at least until I acted so stupidly today. But I know it's all going to change once class's start and people start coming back to Fairwick after the holidays. It won't be the same."

I started to tell her it would, that nothing had to change, but I knew she was right.

"I've been afraid of that too," I said instead.

She took my hand. "You have?"

I nodded and she put her arm around me – as best as she could with both of us standing still on our skis.

"This sucks," she said.

I laughed . . . and was startled at how the sound echoed in the round glade.

"Yeah, poor us. We've had amazing sex for a week and now we have to go back to the real world. How will we survive?"

I'd meant it as a joke, but she answered gravely.

"By remembering. That's why I wanted to bring you here. So we'd have something perfect to picture when we thought about this week."

I looked at the glade. The moon had risen to the center of the gap now, so large and full that it looked as if it would burst through the trees and come rolling towards us. I had a sense of other things – strange and unfriendly things – waiting in the other side of that door for their chance to come through.

I recalled my vision of Faerie and the diaphanous host who had pleaded with me to release them. Were they there waiting for me now? Would they pull me through the door if I strayed too close to it?

"It is beautiful," I said, wanting now to go, but not wanting to alarm Jade. How could I explain what I was afraid of? "But it's also frigging cold. Let's go home."

"Home?" she asked, the light of the moon in her eyes.

I understood what she was asking. And in that moment I realized I wanted it to be our home, that Honeysuckle House had never felt so much like my home as it had this week with Jade there: should I ask her to move in right now?

But then I remembered the way she acted earlier about Annie's email, I hesitated. A shadow fell across Jade's face. She looked away and then she started turning her skis around, pleating the once perfect snow into a wide fan.

Jade went first, her skis shooting away on the slicked tracks. Although I didn't like the idea of being left behind, I took one look back over my shoulder. The clearing was still empty, but the moon had risen high enough now that it cast the shadows of the trees onto the white snow. I thought I saw other shapes among the shadow branches – shapes with horns and wings and spiked tails.

Creatures from the other side of the door trying to come through. _Otherworlders,_ my grandmother had called them. She had also said there wasn't any difference between a fairy and a demon. These shadow creatures certainly looked more like demons than fairies.

I turned and followed Jade, skiing as fast as I could in iced tracks. As the moon rose higher the shadows stretched out longer in the woods on either side of the narrow track. I had the impression that the shadows were chasing us back to the house and if they overtook us we'd never make it back. I skied faster, trying not to look to either side, but unable to resist.

Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw one of the shadows break free and skitter across the snow, scuttling sideways like a crab, its claws scraping against the crusted snow. I pushed my skis faster in their grooves. The shadows fell across the path now, like leaves tossed by the wind, but there was no wind. One shadow landed right in front of me, fat as a toad. Without thinking twice I speared it with my ski pole while reciting the anti-pest spell that I'd heard once.

_Pestis sprengja!_

It popped like a swollen blister and then turned into two shadow crabs.

Shit!

One landed in my left track. I lifted my ski up and slammed down hard, and heard it splatter.

I could see Jade up ahead, standing beyond the path in the yard behind Honeysuckle House. Should I call out to her? What would she see if she looked back? Me batting at shadows? Would she be able to help me – or would the shadows turn on her?

I felt a sudden conviction that the latter would happen. I whacked one of the shadow-crabs with my right pole and raced to reach Jade and the open shadowless lawn she stood in. Just as I reached the end of the path, a prickly ball launched itself at my feet and latched onto my ankle. I lifted my leg to shake it off – and froze in my tracks. There was nothing on my ankle . . . because I had no right ankle.

Where the thing had attached itself there was a blank hole where my ankle should have been, as if the shadow had swallowed my flesh.

I could feel myself falling, but I knew that if I did the shadow crabs would devour me. I used the right pole to balance myself and the left to pry the shadow thing off my ankle before it ate my whole leg. But before I could accomplish that rather complicated maneuver, something else flew out of the woods. I thought it was another shadow crab, but then I noticed that this one looked more like a flying squirrel.

"Ralph!" I screamed.

He landed on the shadow crab attached to my ankle and sank his teeth into it. The thing squealed and fell off, my ankle taking shape again.

"Vega?" I heard Jade calling me. I couldn't let her come back into the woods for me – and I couldn't leave Ralph.

"I'll be right there," I called.

I released my boots from the skis and knelt down, plunging my hands into the drift, knowing full well that I might pull out stumps. But instead I pulled out Ralph. He was limp in my hand. I didn't have time to see if he was breathing. I stuck him in my pocket and ran for the moonlight, out of the shadows, stumbling straight into Jade's arms.

"What are you doing?"

I looked around us. The shadows didn't reach to where we were standing. In fact, they seemed to be shrieking back into the woods.

"I saw Ralph," I said, pulling him out of my pocket. "He was attacked by . . . an owl."

"Poor little guy." Jade peered closer at him, but didn't touch him. "He seems to be breathing. Let's get him inside – and you, too. You're limping."

"I think I twisted my ankle," I said, leaning on Jade's arm.

"Should I go back and get your skis?"

"No!" I said much too loudly. "I'll get them tomorrow. Lets get in before poor Ralph freezes to death."

I hopped onto Jade's back and she carried me back to Honeysuckle House. Her neck and hair smelt of Honeysuckle and the sea.

* * *

I put Ralph in his old basket, wrapped up in a blanket, and put the basket near the fireplace in the library. He was breathing but still unconscious. Maybe the shadow-crab had done something to him. My ankle was swollen and bruised. It didn't hurt, though it felt completely numb, as if it wasn't even there.

Jade propped it up on a pile of pillows on the couch and put an ice pack on it.

She produced a bottle of Moet et Chandon and two glasses and then even more magically, a picnic basket and fed me as if my hands were injured and not just my ankle. I downed two glasses of champagne before I could stop shivering – from the cold. Jade thought, but I knew it was from the fear of the shadow thingys. My grandmother had been right when she said that sooner or later I'd be in danger in Fairwick. I hated when my grandmother was right.

I drank another glass of champagne and let Jade feed me strawberries and whipped cream. Somehow a dab of the cream ended up on my cheekbone. Jade leaned forward and licked it off. I laughed and she drew a mustache over my mouth with two swipes of cream.

"You look like a man now, and thy man name is . . . Walter." Jade said falling back onto the couch and laughing.

I retaliated by burying my damp, whipped-cream covered mouth between her breasts and straddling her lap. Then I unbuttoned her shirt and drew a line of whipped cream from her solar plexus to the waistband of her pants. When my tongue reached her naval she conceded defeat with a long moan. I moved back up her body and smiled down at her when she suddenly began to get up, gathering me in her arms and stood up with me - wrapping my legs around her waist and arms around her neck I gave her a quizzical look.

She rolled her eyes towards Ralph's basket.

"Sorry," she said, "I feel like your friend was watching." She carried me to the stairs.

"You know, I can walk," I said hoarsely.

"Nope, sorry, I don't believe you can. In fact, I believe you're utterly and completely helpless. At my mercy, to do with what I please."

"And what do you please?" I asked when she laid me down on the bed.

She showed me.

* * *

Hours late I startled out of a delicious post-coital languor.

"Hey, Jade?"

She was fast asleep. I got up, pulled Jade's shirt on and limped to my desk. I sat down and looked over to the bed. She looked so peaceful I just wanted to kiss her, but I didn't want to disturb her so I didn't, and she had kissed me plenty in the last few hours. Yes, indeedy, I felt pretty thoroughly kissed.

I leaned forward at my desk to see out the window. The moon had crossed over the top of my house and was in the western half of the sky, throwing all the shadows east, back toward the woods. I thought I could see some of those shadows moving through the woods, skulking between the trees, flitting through the branches, scurrying back before the door closed at midnight. Would they all make it? Or would some be stranded on this side? I shuddered thinking of those shadow-crabs and hoped that they, at least, had made it back. Fairwick already had enough monsters, I thought, climbing back into bed beside Jade.

I wrapped my arms around her, spooning myself against her back, burrowing into the warmth of her body, but it was a long time before I stopped shaking.

* * *

Do review. :) Questions, thoughts welcomed


	17. Chapter 17

AN:Something crazy that happened Yesterday? Had a long ass argument with my mom about whether I'm a Dom or Sadistic she thinks I'm a Dom and I know I'm sadistic. We can talk about BDSM at home but lord forbid I use a curse word or say Vagina or Penis, I have to use words like 'hooha/fanny/willy/male/female genitalia.'

A small piece of ice which lived in a test tube fell in love with a Bunsen burner. "Bunsen! my flame! I melt whenever I see you" said the ice. The Bunsen burner replied:"It's just a phase you're going through."

* * *

Jade was right when she said that things would be different when people started coming back to Fairwick.

The town started coming to life way to soon for my liking. Our idyll was coming to an end. I also sensed a change in Jade. At first I thought she was trying to make up for her display of possessiveness by giving me the space I'd asked for, but then I saw that she was the one who'd become restless and in need of that space.

Seemingly whole woods full of it. She went out for long walks by herself in the morning – searching, she told me, for the inspiration to write – but she came back looking more agitated than when she'd left. Once when I watched her from my desk window crossing the yard, I saw her looking back over her shoulder with a scowl as if she were angry at the woods for failing to give her the material to write something.

Another time I greeted her when she came into the kitchen and she looked up at me with the startled eyes of a fox caught snatching a chicken. It occurred to me that she probably needed a little time to herself.

I started spending more time at my desk trying to get back on track with my own writing, but I found myself too distracted. I decided to do some research on Andre Harris, considering he's the only 'human' at Fairwick college, it just seemed peculiar that a human would not notice the weird things that happen in Fairwick and at the college. I mean the library is full of spell books and books about the _otherworlders._

With that thought in mind I decided to head down to the library and see if I can find anything on the shadow crabs that attacked me.

As I was walking Anton Volkov appeared next me.

"Don't be afraid. I wouldn't dream of injuring a doorkeeper. I do want to help you with your research on Mr. Harris though. I could give you the name of two witches . . . and I'm sure that someday you would return the favor."

I moved my lips and found that I could actually move them this time, although the sound that came out of my numb lips was as faint as ice settling in a water glass.

"Return the favor? How?"

"We needn't decide right now." He inhaled deeply, his long patrician nose practically quivering as if I were a glass of very expensive wine. "I wouldn't ask anything that would go against your . . . desires."

I swallowed with difficulty, my throat constricting. Was he asking me to let him drink my blood?

"What if this favor . . . is something I don't want to do?"

"If you truly don't want to give what I ask, I wont insist. I trust you."

"Why? You've only just met me."

"You're a doorkeeper. Doorkeepers are always honorable."

I thought about that for a second. It was true.

"You promise that if it's something I don't want to do you won't . . . force me."

"I would never force a lady."

"You won't_ glamour_ me?" I asked, recalling the phrase from a recent vampire book I'd read.

He laughed. "I do love that expression! But no, I promise as a gentleman, no _glamouring_. That wouldn't be sporting."

I remembered being told at the party that he was a gentleman. On the face of it, it seemed like a win-win situation. I got information I needed and I didn't have to do anything that I didn't desire. What could go wrong?

"Okay, it's a deal."

He grasped my hand in his hand and squeezed, bowing his head to whisper in my ear two names: Hiram Scudder and Abigail Fisk. Then he was gone, vanished in a frigid gust, and I was in front of the library door.

Something clicked.

I stared at the door until another click startled me out of my surprise. I tried the handle. It didn't move. But then, remembering how time sensitive the buzzer on my apartment door was I tried it again. As soon as I heard the click I pulled the door handle. The door opened.

I stood gaping at the open door for several moments until a voice called from inside.

"Are you coming in or not? You're letting in a draft."

I opened the heavy door and stepped into the great marble foyer. The giant marble candelabra and hanging lamps were unlit. The only light coming from the clerestory arches.

A young man appeared with blond floppy hair.

"What can I help you with today?"

"I'm trying to track down the descendants of two . . . um . . ._ persons?_" I can figure out what the shadow crabs were another time

"What sort of persons?"

"Um . . . I'm not sure . . . do you mean . . .?"

"Fairies, witches, demons, or miscellaneous?"

"Witches," I replied, wondering what 'miscellaneous' covered.

"Very good," he replied, all business. "Come with me,"

I followed him into the elevator.

"Do you need help with the genealogical records?"

"I probably will, I've never used them before."

"They're a little . . . tricky," he admitted. "You said you wanted to look up two witches? I'll get you started on one and then see what I can find on the other."

The door opened onto blackness. For a moment I had the dreadful thought that this mild-mannered, bookish man was a psychotic serial killer who'd lured me to the library's basement to dismember me but he stepped out and flicked a switch that illuminated the massive room filled with floor to ceiling bookshelves.

"Just look up your Scudder. The most current descendants should be listed there. I'll go looking up . . . "

"Abigail Fisk."

He went and I sat down and opened the books. Puffs of dust rose from its delicate, print-crammed pages. How new could be? I wondered, peering at the miniscule type.

But as I paged through "S" I noticed that a more modern type font alternated with the old fashioned print. My eyes jumped over the uneven type until the lines on the page seemed to be vibrating in the flickering light. I could feel the muscles of my eye contracting and spasming with the effort. By the time I got to "Sc" my eyes stung.

Scales, Scanlon, Scarlett, I read

Scott, Scott, Scott. Scu . . .

My finger ran into splotch that swelled in my bleary vision. Maybe I needed reading glasses, I thought, leaning back and closing my eyes for moment.

When I opened them the splotch had grown six inches and sprouted legs.

I screamed and sprang back, knocking the chair to the floor.

The splotch quivered and launched itself through the air directly at my face. I screamed again and ducked. I heard a wet splat behind me and turned, hoping the thing was dead but the gelatinous mass was gathering itself for another leap. As it sprang I grabbed a book from the shelf next to me and swung it like a baseball bat. The splotch squelched like a rotten tomato, but I didn't stop to see if it was dead. I ran pulling books down behind me to impede the splotch's progress. I could hear it chittering wetly at my heels. Not dead.

Desperately I tried to remember a spell that would be useful. The thing wasn't attacking from above so that wouldn't work. There was one, I recalled, preventing bedbugs but this wasn't a bedbug . . . or – gruesome thought! – What if it was? What if this was a mutated magical version? Ugh! I recalled the spell I used in the woods and turned to face the creature . . . and wished I hadn't. The splotch had ballooned to the size of an overweight pit bull and it had grown pincers. Horrified, I watched as it gathered itself for one more attack, I raised my hands to shield my face and began to recite the spell, but before I could I heard someone else say it. _Pestis sprengja!_ Then I heard a shriek that sounded like something's death throes. I lowered my hands and saw the library guy standing over a puddle of yellow ooze with an open book in his hands.

"What the hell was that?" I gasped, leaning against a shelf to steady my trembling legs.

"A lacuna," he said, his voice trembling. "A biblioparasite that nests in books and grows when it smells blood. Nasty things." He closed the book in his hands and wiped its cover clean with his sleeve.

"Geez, do you get a lot of them?"

He shook his head. "Almost never." He slipped the spell book into his pocket and looked at me. "Where did you find it?"

"In the book you gave me . . . under 'S'. I had just gotten to Scudder when I saw this . . . spot." I shuddered recalling that I had touched it.

"Someone planted the lacuna there, blotting out the Scudder the lineage and discouraging anyone who tried to go looking for it. One of his descendants, I suspect, who doesn't want to be connected to Hiram Scudder, but I found something interesting about Abigail Fisk's descendants. One of them teaches at Fairwick."

"Well that's not unusual. Lots of witches teach at Fairwick."

"Yes, but no one knows this one's a witch. He's there under false pretenses." He handed me his notebook. Under Abigail Fisk was a name I knew. Andre Harris.

* * *

Ralph was still unconscious when I returned home and I'd begun to fear that he'd never wake up. I'd show him to Robbie when he brought back my car from the repair shop.

"If he was made of iron I could solder him back together," Robbie told me regretfully. "I'm not so good with things made of flesh and bone though. You should take him to Soheila. She's better with things of the spirit."

I promised Robbie I would.

Towards the end of the week I received an email from Soheila Lilly that the college would be holding office hours on Friday. I decided to take Ralph to Soheila then and confront Andre Harris.

After breakfast on Friday I told Jade I had to pick up some papers from my office. I was afraid that she'd offer to go with me, but instead she said she felt like doing some writing. Did I mind if she used my desk? She liked the view from my window and she'd be careful not to disturb any of my things. I said of course I didn't mind and she gave me a kiss before going upstairs, but the exchange left me feeling uneasy.

It seemed silly that she should have to ask to use a corner of space in a huge house that was once hers – and silly that she always had to go back to the inn for a change of clothes when there was three or four empty closets upstairs.

But if I told her to move some of her things over, would she think I was asking her to move in? Did I want her to? I promised myself that we'd at least talk about the issue that night and left my house.

My ankle was still sore, but it felt good to be out in the air and moving. I went through the southeast gate, which stood wide open now, and up the path to the quad. I saw a couple of students who must have been back early for campus jobs or to get a head start on the semester. One of them was Alyssa Vaughn.

"Good morning, Professor Vega," she said in her formal English. "I see you are walking with a . . . gimp? Have you injured yourself?"

"A limp. Yes, I got caught in a wild trance party stomp." Alyssa's blank, wide-eyed stare made me feel sorry I'd resorted to sarcasm. "Just kidding, Alyssa. I twisted it cross-country skiing. How was your vacation?"

"It was very productive, thank you. I worked in the admissions office, sorting through applications. You would be amazed at how many students want to come to Fairwick. And such interesting, accomplished young people! It made me feel very lucky to be here."

I thought waking up in an empty hotel room was pathetic, but Alyssa's holiday sounded even more bereft. "I hope you didn't work the whole vacation?"

"Oh no! Dean Book was very kind and invited me to her house."

"Really?"

"Dean Book is very kind and Miss Hart makes the most delicious cakes and cookies," Alyssa rubbed her stomach. "I am afraid that I gained weight over the holiday."

"You look good Alyssa."

"You, too, are looking well, Professor Vega," Alyssa said, leaning in closer as if trying to get a better look at me. Perhaps the girl needed glasses; she often stood a little too close. Or perhaps the people from her country had a difference sense of personal space. "You are glowing. You must have had a very satisfying holiday."

I blushed thinking of just how _satisfying_ my holiday had been and where that well-rested glow came from – and also because something in the way Alyssa was staring at me made me think that she knew, too. Could word have already gotten around campus that Jade and I were seeing each other? Was Alyssa deliberately teasing me? But then I dismissed the idea as paranoid. It was just Alyssa's awkward English that made her comments sound suggestive. I took a step back.

"Well, I have to get something from my office . . ."

"Do you need help?" Alyssa asked, stepping forward and closing the space between us again. "It won't be easy for you to carry anything with your injury. Dean Book won't mind if I'm a little late for work . . ."

"No, Alyssa," I said firmly and perhaps a bit too brusquely. "I'm not picking up anything heavy. I'll be fine. Go to work. I'm sure that the dean needs you more than I do."

"Yes, you're probably right. She hasn't been feeling well. But if you ever need anything . . ."

"Thank you, I'll remember that."

I turned and continued on my way to Fraser Hall.

"What'd you do Tori?" I heard Andre yell as I passed his office. "Get into a fight down in the mean old city?"

I stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at him. He had his feet up on the desk,

"No," I answered, "but I was attacked by a lacuna while doing some genealogy research at the library."

Andre looked up, eyes narrowed. He might be calculating whether he could get away with pretending not to know what I was talking about, but after a moment he asked,

"Are you okay? Those things are nasty."

I sank down in a chair, my knees suddenly weak. Part of me had been hoping that he'd deny being part of this world. After all the shocks I'd absorbed, learning that witches and fairies existed, I had counted on this brusque but utterly familiar man being simply what he appeared to be.

"I survived," I said, "and learned that you're a descendant of one Abigail Fisk."

"My grandma."

"She was a witch."

"Among other things." He grinned, but sobered when I didn't return his smile. "But yes, she was a witch."

"And you? Are you a witch?"

He shrugged. "'Magic Professional' is the politically correct term in fashion currently, but I think 'wizard' has more panache. Just please don't call me a Wiccan."

"Does anyone else know you're a witch?" I asked.

"Nope. I was hired on my academic standing alone – just as you were. I bet the dean was surprised to learn you were a doorkeeper."

"I have a feeling she'd be more surprised to learn that you're a witch," I snapped back, not wanting to give Andre the satisfaction of showing surprise that he knew what I was. "But she hasn't, has she? You've kept your identity secret. So tell me why you are here and I wont tell the Dean."

He crossed the room and yanked open a filing cabinet drawer, took out a thick file, and flung it on the desk in front of me.

"These are complaints lodged against Fairwick with I.M.P. they range from unauthorized tampering with the weather to harassment of civilians by supernatural creatures. For instance, I noticed you in a rather close clinch with Anton Volkov earlier to day. If he asked you to give blood in exchange for information, or if he's glamouring you, he's violated your rights."

"I didn't know . . ."

"But you should have known. Once you became aware of the true nature of Fairwick, Elizabeth Book should have debriefed you and informed you of your rights."

"She did give me some forms and brochures a few weeks ago," I lied. In truth she hadn't been able to find them and I'd told her not to bother. I didn't mention the spell book because given my recent experiences with using it I was beginning to suspect I shouldn't have been given it without more guidance.

All my spells seemed to backfire.

"I just didn't get around to reading them."

"It was her responsibility to review the material with you."

"She hasn't been feeling well," I countered. Somehow my showdown with Andre Harris had turned into an interrogation – of me. I had to think of a way to turn things around.

"Which is probably why she didn't realize you're a witch. Awfully convenient for you . . ."

"Not feeling well is the understatement of the year. She's fading. For a witch who has used her magic to augment her lifespan that's fatal. Somebody – or something – is sucking the life out of her. I thought at first that it was the vampires, but she doesn't have any bite marks. I'm looking into other possibilities now, but it's crucial for my investigation that I remain undercover."

"Investigation? Undercover?"

Andre sighed and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. It was made of old worn leather and had acquired a curve that no doubt matched the curve of his butt. He took out a laminated card and handed it to me. I recognized the insignia of I.M.P. – two crescent moons flanking an orb – but under the logo were printed the initials I.M.P.I.A.

"I.M.P.I.A.?" I asked.

"Institute of Magical Professionals Internal Affairs," he said.

"You mean you're a . . ."

"Undercover investigator. Promise not to blow my cover. If you do, I wont be able to continue trying to find out what's making Liz Book sick."

"Okay," I agreed. "As long as you promise to let me know what you find out."

"Sure," he said, sticking out his hand. "You'll be the first to know."

I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not, but I shook his hand anyway. As deals went it wasn't as bad as the one I'd made with Anton Volkov.

* * *

AN:I appreciate all your thoughts :)


	18. Chapter 18

AN: Damn you Lucas! Now please tell me? XD

What do you call a tooth in a glass of water? a one molar solution.

* * *

As I walked to Soheila's office I wondered if it was naïve to trust Andre. Andre was brusque, opinionated, and sometimes downright obnoxious, but I instinctively felt that he was a good man. Of course my instincts have been wrong before.

Soheila greeted me warmly with a kiss on the cheek. After we sat down I asked something that has been on my mind for a long time.

"Soheila, I don't mean to pry, but I'm not exactly sure what you are. I remember Liz said something about you being a Babylonian wind spirit. . ."

Soheila smiled. "That was rather a euphemism, I'm afraid, although it's true that my kind are descended from wind spirits, but under the circumstances, Liz and I agreed that it might be best if you didn't know my more common name. You see, I am a descendant of Lilith, one of the lilitu, or as we are more commonly known, a succubus."

"A succubus! You mean like the one who invaded my house? But I thought they were always . . ."

"Selfish? Destructive? Evil? Yes, certainly that's how they have been characterized in myth and Western religion, and to tell you the truth most of my sisters are. My kind used to ride the wind until we encountered those who craved us so much that we became flesh and we craved that flesh . . . needed it in order to sustain ourselves."

Sex in exchange for fleshly existence. And yet it was hard for me to imagine someone of Soheila's refinement engaging in that sort of sordid deal.

"So in order to stay . . . like you are . . . you have to . . ." she smiled at my embarrassment.

"I no longer have to feed that way, but that is only because I was loved." She smiled sadly and looked at a picture of Angus on her desk. "But that's enough about me. You came to ask me something, didn't you?"

"Yes," I said, relieved in spite of myself to change the subject. I put my hand in my pocket and brought out Ralph. I held him to Soheila. "He attacked some shadow creature and has been in some sort of coma ever since. Can you do anything to help him?"

She cupped Ralph gently with both hands as I handed him over and tilted her head to angle her ear above his chest. Then she laid him on her desk and angled her desk lamp so that it shone directly on him.

"See," she said, tapping the wood next to Ralph. "No shadow. That means he's travelling in the shadows of the Borderland. Do you have your spell book with you?"

"Yes," I said taking the book out of my bag.

"Look up 'Shadow Travel - how to call a traveler back."

"We have to draw his shadow and recite this spell," I pointed out to her.

As Soheila got up and moved to get paper I thought I saw a familiar figure outside the window in the quad. I got up and walked to the window, but the figure was gone. It had looked like Jade . . . but Jade hadn't said she was coming to campus.

Soheila returned and said that I will only be able to get Ralph back safely into his body once I caught the shadow crab and destroyed it . . . that's what I get from skimming over the spell and not reading it properly . . . so I have to go back and catch this shadow thing?

* * *

Walking home slowly I thought about Soheila's story. What would it feel like to love someone but know that if you gave into your desire to be with him or her you would endanger his or her life? It made my dilemma about whether Jade and I were moving too fast seem pretty insignificant.

When I opened the door to Honeysuckle House I was greeted with the smell of cinnamon. Jade was in the kitchen making cinnamon rolls. I leaned forward and kissed her. Her skin was warm and there was a dusting of flour in her hair. I must have been mistaken when I saw her at campus; clearly she's been here all day.

"I've just got to run across the street to get a change of clothes," she said.

"Why don't you get all your things," I said impulsively. " I mean it's silly for you to keep going back and forth . . ." I looked up and saw that she was staring at me. "What I mean to say is that if you want to live here, I'd like you to."

Jade wrapped her arms around me. I could feel the heat of her skin through her flannel shirt enfolding me. "Yes," she murmured into my neck and picked me up carrying me to _our bedroom._

* * *

"You have the most amazing skin, flawless, olive and perfect" both of her hands are in my hair, grasping each side of my head. Her kiss is always so demanding, her tongue and lips coaxing mine. I moan, and my tongue tentively meets hers. She puts her arms around me and pulls me against her body, squeezing me tightly. One hand remains in my hair, the other travels down my spine to my waist and down to my behind. Her hand flexes over my butt and she squeezes gently, holding my hips against hers.

I moan into her mouth moving my hands up to her face and into her hair. It's so soft, I tug gently and she groans. She eases me towards the bed, until I feel it behind my knees. I think she's going to push me down on to it, but she doesn't. She drops to her knees and grabs my hips with her hands running her tongue around my navel, then gently nips her way to my hipbone, then across my belly to my other hipbone.

I groan.

Seeing her on her knees in front of me, feeling her mouth on me is so hot. My hands stay in her hair, pulling gently as I try to quiet my too-loud breathing. She gazes up at me through impossibly long lashes, her blue eyes burning into my hazel ones.

Her hands reach up and undo the button on my jeans, and she leisurely pulls down the zipper. Without taking her eyes off mine, her hands move beneath the waistband, skimming me and moving to my behind. Her hands glide slowly down my backside to my thighs, removing my jeans as they go. I can't look away from her.

She leans forward, running her nose up the apex between my thighs.

"You always smell so good," Jade murmurs, and closes her eyes, a look of pure pleasure on her face, and I practically convulse.

She pushes me gently so I fall on the mattress and pulls off my jeans completely.

I raise myself onto my elbows to watch as she stands and pulls down her own jeans revealing thin black lace panties. She leans down over me and, grasping each of my ankles, quickly jerks my legs apart and crawls onto the bed between my legs.

She hovers over me as I squirm with need.

"Keep still, Tori." She whispers, then leans down and kisses the inside of my thigh, trailing kisses up and over the material that's covering my sex.

Oh god . . . how am I supposed to keep still?

Her kisses keep heading north, up my belly and to my swelled breasts. She pulls my bra down so that the cups push my breasts up. My skin is burning, I'm flushed and clawing at the sheet beneath me.

My nipples harden under her steady gaze.

"I love your breasts." And my nipples harden even more at the sound of her lust filled voice.

Jade blows very gently on one as her hand moves to the other, her thumb slowly rolls the end of my nipple. I groan, feeling the sweet sensation all the way to my groin.

I am so wet.

Oh, please, I beg internally as my fingers clasp the sheet tighter. Her lips close around the other nipple and when she tugs with her teeth an un-godly sound leaves my throat.

Her hand moves down my waist, to my hips, and then she cups my sex. Her finger slips through the material and slowly circles around my sensitive bundle of nerves.

"You're so deliciously wet. I want to try something tonight, to give you pleasure on a more intense level," Jade whispers as she moves up to my ear.

She thrust her finger inside me, and I cry out as she does it again and again. Jade palms my clitoris, and I cry out once more. She pushes a second and third finger into me harder and harder still. I moan into her neck.

Suddenly, she sits up and tugs my panties off and throws them on the floor. Pulling her own off and reaches beneath the bed pulling out a double-sided eight-inch strap on.

When did that get there? And holy cow . . .

She inserts one end into her self with a soft groan and then moves between my legs, spreading them farther apart. She kneels up and pulls my hips toward her.

Oh god . . . how? Will it?

"Don't worry," she breathes, her eyes on mine. "You'll expand to." Jade leans down, her hands on either side of my head, so she's hovering over me, staring down into my eyes.

"Pull your knees up, Vega." She orders softly and I'm quick to obey.

"I'm going to fuck you now." She whispers as she positions the head of the strap on at my entrance. "Hard," she breathes and slams into me.

We both moan, me considerably louder. She stills, gazing down at me, her eyes bright with ecstatic triumph.

"You okay?"

I nod, my eyes wide, she eases back with exquisite slowness and closes her eyes, groans and thrusts into me again.

"More?" she whispers her voice raw.

"Yes," I breathe. She does it once more, and stills. I whimper . . . oh I want this.

"Again?" she asks.

"Yes." It's a plea.

And she moves, but this time she doesn't stop. She shifts onto her elbows so I can feel her weight and breasts holding me down. She moves slowly at first, easing in and out, my hips move tentatively to meet hers. She speed up. I moan and she pounds on, picking up speed, merciless, a relentless rhythm, and I keep up, meeting her thrust. She grasps my head between her hands and kisses me hard, her teeth pulling at my lower lip.

My body quivers, bows; a sheen of sweat gathers over me. My thoughts scattering . . .there's only sensation . . . only her . . . only me . . . I stiffen.

"Come with me, Tori," she whispers breathlessly and I unravel at her words, exploding as I climax and break into million pieces underneath her. And she comes calling out my name, thrusting hard.

I open my eyes panting, Jade has her forehead pressed against mine, her eyes still closed, her breathing ragged.

Jade's eyes flicker open and gaze down at me. Leaning down, she gently presses a kiss against my nose and then slowly pulls the toy out of me.

"Ouch," I wince at the unfamiliarity.

"Did I hurt you?" Jade asks as she tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. I grin widely.

I stare up at Jade thinking about how gratifyingly amazing that was. The pleasure was indescribable.

"You're biting your lip, and you haven't answered me."

I pull her face down to mine and kiss her softly, whispering into her mouth.

"I'd like to do that again."


	19. Chapter 19

AN: Is that a vector in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me xD

* * *

I'd never lived with anyone before.

Sure I lived in a dorm with roommates but that was different and I moved to an apartment as soon as I could. I never actually mixed my stuff with someone's in one place.

Jade didn't have much stuff - she'd been travelling light for years, she told me – but her presence immediately pervaded the house, a clean salty smell like the sea, a peaty tang from Irish whiskey she sipped watching the sunset from the front porch when she'd finished writing for the day, and something sweet and evasive, like a breath of honeysuckle on a summer breeze. The ledges of the windowsills and the empty bowls and baskets filled with things she brought back from her walks – a twisted piece of honeysuckle vine that looked like driftwood, round grey river stones, a bird's nest – things a twelve-year-old boy or nineteenth-century naturalist might collect . . . or I sometimes thought, the things a wild animal might bring back to its liar.

I didn't want her to feel as if she were squatting in the house rather than really living in it, though, so on the weekend before classes were to begin we borrowed Robbie's truck and drove to an antique barn all the way across town to buy some more things for Jade's study.

We stopped at another antiques store on the way back.

"That's pretty," Jade said when she saw me looking at a lovely old-fashioned emerald and diamond engagement ring. The old woman who ran the shop seized the opportunity to open the case.

"Ah, she has a good eye. That's my best piece – got it from the Trask estate over by Glenburnie." She took the ring out of its velvet case and handed it to Jade instead of me. She held the ring up in the weak sunlight, turning it back and forth to release a spray of fiery sparks in the dull, dusty shop.

Then she took my hand and slipped the ring onto my ring finger. It fit perfectly.

"It's lovely," I said, holding my hand up in the light. The old stones glittered as if they held a spark of forgotten life inside of them. Then I turned my hand over and read the price tag. "But expensive." I started to take the ring off but Jade had already had a quick whispered confab with the shop owner, who was smiling like a schoolgirl at something Jade had said. She grabbed my hand and pushed the ring back on my finger.

"It belongs to you," she said. "I want you to have it."

I looked down at my hand. It was my right hand, not my left, so not an engagement ring. Still, it was a diamond ring.

"Jade, it's beautiful, but I don't know . . ."

She held up my hand in the light again. A bit of the spark from the ring lit up her eyes.

"The diamonds remind me of the moonlight," she said, and then leaning down to whisper in my ear, "and the emerald will bring out the hazel in your eyes when we make love"

I felt the warmth of her breath on my ear travel straight down my spine.

"Well, I'd better keep it then," I said, my voice wobbly with desire. "I can't have anyone else having it then."

That night when we made love I twined my hands around the bedpost as I had once before. The moonlight caught the ring and cast a spray of diamond and emerald starlight across Jade's face. It made her look insubstantial – as if she might dissolve into a zillion atoms and blow away. I unwound my hands from the bedpost and gripped onto her instead and remembered what she told me that night.

Hold on, she'd said.

And so I did.

* * *

Of course it was the ring that my students noticed first.

"Ooooh, Professor V. did you get engaged over the break?" Nicky asked me.

"It's on the wrong hand," Alyssa said, pressing in between Nicky and myself, reaching out to touch my hand. "She'd be wearing it on her left if she were engaged, right Professor Vega?"

"Yes," I admitted, surprised Alyssa knew that, apparently Nicky thought so too.

"How do you know that, Alyssa?" she asked.

"I read it in one of Dean Book's magazines._ Your left hand says you're taken_," Alyssa moved her hand to touch my left hand, and then back to my right where she left it. "_Your right hand says you can take over._" I recognized that slogan from an ad campaign that had run a few years ago. It had annoyed me at the time because even though the ads seemed to promote an image of women as independent and capable, it had also suggested that the woman who couldn't afford to go out and buy an expensive ring for herself was somehow lacking in those qualities.

It had also made me want to go out and buy a ring and I could still remember another line from the ad: _Your left hand believes in shining armor. Your right hand thinks knights are for fairytales._

"So she must have bought it for herself, right, Profess?"

I should have been glad for a graceful evasion to my students' prying questions, but when I saw the disappointed looks in their eyes I smiled enigmatically and, removing my hand from under Alyssa's, wiggled my fingers so that the diamonds and emerald caught the light.

"Maybe," I sang. "Or maybe not," my students oohed as I waved them back to heir seats with a flourish that made the ring flash again. "Now let's get to work. You were supposed to have read _Dracula_ over the vacation,"

The oohs were soon replaced by groans as my students complained about Lucy Westenra's passivity in the book. I'd hoped that they'd have exactly that reaction. I wanted them to be impatient with the helplessness of the heroines of Gothic novels so that they could fully appreciate the Buffys and Sookies of the modern vampire genre. I also wanted them to stop wondering who gave me the ring, but in that I failed, sabotaged by Jade showing up at the end of the class with a book I'd forgotten at _home._

I believe it took about five minutes after that for the news that I was "shaking up with" and "nearly engaged to" Jade West to spread throughout the campus.

"I didn't know you wanted to keep it a secret," Jade said later when I confronted her at home. "I don't. I want to shout it from the rooftops. Why do you want to keep it a secret?"

I had no good answers for that and I didn't want to fight.

I felt tired suddenly from the stress and excitement of being back at work after a long break.

"Maybe you're right," I said, letting my head drop and rubbing my neck. I felt _achy_ as well as_ tired_. Maybe I was acting so cranky with Jade because I was coming down with something.

"What's right is us – you and me. We fit together perfectly. How could anyone begrudge us our happiness, when they see how good we are together?" She massaged the back of my neck. "Your muscles are really tight. Why don't you take a nice long bath while I make dinner?"

That sounded like such a good idea that I followed Jade's advice. I think she felt bad about the argument, though, because she came upstairs while I was in the tub and offered to shampoo my hair. She sat on the rim of the tub and rubbed the lavender-scented shampoo into my scalp, kneading the muscles in the back of my neck and shoulders. Then she picked up the soap and lathered my back.

"Hmm . . . I could do this better if I were in the tub . . ."

I heard her clothes slipping to the floor and then she was climbing into the tub behind me, slipping her legs around either side of me. She massaged my scalp and neck, her fingers whisking the tension away as though by magic. She soaped my back, stroking arcs along my shoulder blades.

"Ummm," I moaned, leaning back against her chest, the soap from my back making her skin slick. She reached around me and lathered my breast, pinching my nipples lightly. I moaned and scooched back into her body as she placed feather light kisses along my jaw and neck. Her right hand slipped down my stomach and to my throbbing core as her fingers entered me . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . as her thumb put pressure on my little bundle of nerves and her left hand worked on my breasts.

As she pumped in and out of me I felt her bite down into the nape of my neck.

I wasn't sure if what I felt was pleasure or pain. I only knew I wanted more.

* * *

I got up early the next day to go by the dean's office before class to make sure that she heard the news that Jade and I were living together from me and not from one of the students.

"That's nice, dear," she said smiling vaguely while accepting a cup of tea from Alyssa who was there helping her sort admission forms. "She seems nicer now that she's with you." She shivered and drew a shawl up around her shoulders. The shawl made her look old – she's lost weight over the break and her hair was so thin I could see patches of her scalp. She's _fading,_ Andre had said. She did look as if she were dissolving into the muted wallpaper of her office. "I guess you're lucky in a way."

"Lucky?" I asked.

"Yes, if Jade never returned you'd be all lonely and sad in that big house."

I stared at her, aghast that she was suggesting that I was lucky to have found someone to be in a relationship with.

"I'm sure what the dean means," Alyssa said, laying her hand on the dean's frail shoulder, "is that we are all happy that you found someone to share things with and have fun with other than the usual older people of the town or young students."

"Yes, that's just what I meant. Thank you, Alyssa dear," the dean said, patting Alyssa's hand.

I tried not to look incredulous, but I couldn't help wondering why the dean sounded so sarcastic with that statement.

"Profess, aren't you writing a book? That must be hard to do with your teaching responsibilities?"

"That's right! Tori's writing a book, how's that coming?"

"Oh, it's coming along fine," I lied. The truth was that I hadn't done any work on it in weeks. "There's a lot of material and research to organize."

"Well, then why don't you take Alyssa? I'll assign her to you as a research assistant." The dean beamed at me and at Alyssa – the first really animated expression I'd seen on her face since I'd come into the office. Clearly she was pleased with herself for solving two dilemmas at once and honestly, I could use the help. It was only the second day of the semester and already the essays I'd asked my students to write in class yesterday were weighing down my bag. Maybe I could get Alyssa to grade them.

Although her spoken English was awkward, her written command of the language was impressive and she was a punctilious stickler for grammar and spelling. I could also have her catalog my manuscripts.

"That would actually be great," I told Liz. "If it's okay with Alyssa," I added, glancing worriedly at the girl. We'd been talking about her as if she were a piece of chattel to be traded between us. But Alyssa looked almost as pleased as Dean Book.

"It will be an honor to work for you," she said in her stilted, formal English. "I'm happy to be of use."

I was still a little worried that some of my students – especially the ones who had crushes on Jade – would be jealous of my new relationship, but I couldn't detect anything like that in class. After class that day, Nicky came up to tell me that she was glad I wasn't all alone in "that house" anymore and that she thought Professor West was perfect for me.

"You've both been so nice to me. I'm really looking forward to doing the independent student study with Professor West. I wrote a lot over the holidays." Nicky, looking well rested and happy from her break, didn't betray any sign of jealousy even though I knew she had a crush on Jade.

The only person who did begrudge my new romantic liaison was Andre Harris, who cornered me in the department office later that week.

"I hear you and the freaky one are shacking up. That was pretty quick. Didn't you just meet her? Do you think it's such a good idea to move in with someone – especially one you don't really know anything about?"

"Who are you, my mother?" I snapped angrily – partly to cover up my inability to answer his questions.

I knew it was too soon, that Jade and I were moving too fast. At times I felt like I'd stepped on one of those conveyor belts that moved tired travelers through airports. _How exactly did I get here?_ I would wonder, coming home at night to find Jade lighting a fire in the library and handing me a glass of wine to drink while she finished dinner. (I know I should offer to cook sometimes, but I'd started working with Alyssa in the afternoons and I always felt so tired when I came home.) After dinner we'd curl up on the couch in front of the fire and I'd think, _who cares? Why question happiness?_ And when, later in bed, I watched Jade's face, pale in the moonlight that struggled through the opaque ice-coated windows, I'd think: _All we ever have is now – this moment – so how can it ever be too soon to be happy?_

* * *

AN: So then ? Anyone find the Catfish show with the person who has a Liz shrine and twitter account and writes fanfic weird … lol ! god that show was awkward and Nev's tweets were funny.

Anyone watch Animal ? It's a good movie. I've been watching Rome and Pompeii instead of studying for my final Drama theory exam tomorrow. Oh well . . .

Was anyone at Download Festival? xD

You guys are lovely btw .x


	20. Chapter 20

AN:What do you do with a dead chemists? Barium

* * *

Each day I drew Ralph's shadow and burnt it while repeating the spell for safe travel, but he remained soundly asleep.

When I put him back in his basket I'd find myself wanting to crawl back into bed instead of tromping to campus to lecture a class full of sleepy college students in an overheated classroom.

It was perfectly normal, I told myself, that I'd want to crawl back into bed when I came home from campus and that I'd want to spend all weekend curled up on the library couch with Jade. It's not as if we made love all the time. Sometimes we'd read and Jade would make coffee and cinnamon toast at 4a.m. sometimes we'd watch old movies. Jade loved the old classic and romantic movies as well as some old horrors and thrillers, but when watching the romance movies she seemed to be studying it with intent.

We watched Bringing Up Baby, It Happened One Night and The Philadelphia Story and also their modern counterparts, like Annie Hall, Sleepless In Seattle, and You've Got Mail. She knew them all practically line for line, and yet they still seemed to surprise her.

"They start out not liking each other, but then they fall in love. They keep fighting even when they are in love. Why is that? Do they have to start out not liking each other to fall in love?"

"It makes a better story," I told her. "It would be too easy if they liked each other from the beginning and the things that irk them about each other . . . well, maybe those are things they really are looking for but are afraid to believe exists."

"Is that why they're always with other people in the beginning? Because they've given up on finding the right person and settled for the wrong one?"

"Maybe," I said, wondering if she was thinking of Annie and me.

When we got to the part in You've Got Mail just before Tom Hanks appears in Riverside Park and Meg Ryan finds out that her secret pen pal is really the man who put her out of business.

Jade asked, "If I lied to you about something that big – like pretending to be someone I wasn't – would you be able to forgive me?"

"Uh oh, don't tell me, you're a spy from a secret society and you've been having wild, passionate sex with me just to gain access to my work?"

I hoped the reference to "Wild, passionate sex" would divert her – perhaps towards some more of the same – but instead she became even more agitated. She got up and started pacing back and forth in front of the bookcases.

"All these books you read and write about, your romances, do you think they really tell the truth about love?" She plucked a copy of Evelina from the shelf. "Could a person read them and learn how to be in love?"

"They're not operating manuals," I snipped, growing irritated now. I don't have the energy for a philosophical debate on the nature of love. Or maybe she'd hit a nerve. I sometimes wondered if the reason I read romances was to figure out what it meant to be in love.

"There's no such thing. People learn to love from experience. It takes time. You can't study it like studying the piano or Shakespeare . . ."

"Then what good are they?" she asked, lobbing Evelina across the room and then stomping out of the library.

"Hey! That's a 1906 edition!" I called after her.

I considered following her, but I suddenly felt too tired – tired of Jade's outbursts and just plain tired. I burrowed into the couch covering myself with the fluffy alpaca throw that smelled like Jack Daniel's and Shalimar.

Everybody left.

I'd worked myself up to a good cry when Jade came back, repentant and smelling like the outdoors. Her forehead was cool when she pressed it against mine.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Do you want to watch the rest of the movie?"

"No," I said, wrapping my arms around her neck. "I think we ought to get you some more experience in the art of love."

"Oh," she said, lifting me and placing my legs around her waist, heading for the stairs. "Like this?"

"Rhett Butler one-oh-one – yes, exactly like this."

I had to admit that my constant fatigue was more than the effects of lots of sex. Something was wrong with me. Since I didn't have a family doctor in the area yet, I went to the school infirmary before my class.

I found a crowded waiting room full of sniffling, bleary-eyed students and a harassed nurse.

"What's going on?" I asked when I signed in – I recognized some of my students' names on the sign-up sheet.

The nurse, whose I.D. badge identified as Kotter, held up a finger for me to wait while she sneezed.

"Dr. Schneider thinks it's mono, although so far the test have all come back negative."

"What are the symptoms?" I asked.

"Fatigue, night sweats, anemia."

"Huh. I have fatigue, but I haven't noticed any night sweats . . ." I said, but then I realized, blushing, that I did sweat a lot at night, but that was because of what I was doing at night. And I had no idea whether I was anemic or not, although I never had been before.

"Have a seat," Nurse Kotter said. "The doctor will be with you as soon as he can."

I sat in an uncomfortable chair – the only seat left – and took out a pile of papers to grade. The room was certainly quiet enough to get some work done. The only noise was the muted whisper of Ipods plugged into many of the students' ears. I graded two papers – adding the scratch of my red pen to the hushed atmosphere – before noticing something peculiar.

I was sitting in a room full of college students and no one was talking. Shouldn't a group of eighteen to twenty-two-year-olds, all attending the same small college have something to say to one another?

I looked up and scanned the room's occupants. Directly across from me, sprawled in a too small chair, was a shaggy-haired boy with a goatee and silver nose ring. I recognized him from Jade's class and one of her admirers, but didn't recall his name, Wes? Will? Waylon? Something with a W – the trademark of the band Weezer – was tattooed on his neck. His eyes were closed, his head bobbing to the music leaking tinnily out of his plastic ear buds . . . or no, actually, his head was nodding because he was asleep. Each time his head fell heavily forward he snapped it up again and made a strangled gurgle. It was painful to watch but also a teeny bit funny.

I looked around to see if anyone else was noticing his nodding-out performance, but everyone else was either asleep or staring vacantly into space or out of the windows.

The only person who even had a book in her hand was Flonia Rugova, who I noticed now curled up in the one comfortable looking sofa. I got up and went over to her. She flinched when I put my hand on her shoulder.

"Profess, where did you come from? I didn't see you there."

"I've been sitting here for fifteen minutes, but I didn't see you either. I was grading papers. I'd say you didn't see me because you were so engrossed in your book, but although I'm not an expert on Czech, I'm pretty sure you don't read it upside down."

Flonia glanced down at the book in her lap – Czeslaw Milosz's Collected Poems in the original.

"Oh," she said. "I'm reading it for the independent study I'm doing with Miss. West and Dr. Demisovski. It's really great but somehow I read two lines and then I find myself staring into space." She yawned. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I seem to sleep all the time and I have such strange dreams . . ."

"Flonia Rugova?"

I thought that Flonia had stopped mid-sentence because Nurse Kotter had called her name, but she hadn't made any move to get up or acknowledge the sound of her name and when I looked down I saw that she had actually fallen asleep.

"Flonia?" I laid my hand on her bare forearm. Her skin was cold to the touch. "I think it's your turn."

"Oh!" she cried, startling awake. The color in her cheeks darkened and she stared at me as if she didn't know who I was.

"Miss Rugova?" The nurse was standing over us. "Dr. Schneider will see you now."

Flonia smiled at me and got up. The book of poems fell to the floor. I picked it up and handed it to her.

"Czeslaw Milosz!" she exclaimed, as if she'd never seen the book before. "I love him. Thanks!"

* * *

Dr. Schneider listened as attentively to my symptoms as he did to my heart and lungs. He peered into my throat and ears, palpitated my glands, and took my blood. He asked me the standard questions.

"Any shortness of breath?"

"No," I answered, recalling the gasps I made while making love to Jade.

"Heart palpitations?"

"I don't think so." My heart felt like it was racing right then as I thought about Jade.

"Dizziness?"

"Not really." I didn't think the swoony feeling I got when I looked into Jade's eyes counted.

"Weight loss?"

"I wish! I've been eating like a truck driver."

"Really? Because I noticed your pants are loose. Have you weighed yourself lately?"

I admitted I hadn't and he asked me to step on the scale.

I was five pounds lighter than when I'd weighed myself last.

"Do you eat at the cafeteria?" he asked.

"No," I said.

He sighed. "Neither have any of the others who have anemia, I wondered if it was some food from the cafeteria that leached iron from blood. I'm afraid it was a screwball idea." He laughed good-naturedly at himself. "But not as screwball as my first thought."

"And what was that?" I asked.

"Vampires," he said, wiggling his eyebrows in mock horror. "Honestly, when I started seeing all this anemia my first thought was it's like all these kids are being drained of their blood."

* * *

AN: thoughts? btw those who review are smarticle particles.

What animal Lucas ? :)


	21. Chapter 21

AN:Did you hear about the chemist who was reading a book about Helium? He just couldn't put it down.

* * *

I left the infirmary feeling worse than when I came.

Although Dr. Schneider had been joking – clearly he was not in on Fairwick secrets – I couldn't help wondering if he was on to something. Were the Russian Studies professors preying on the student body? Draining them of blood? It seemed improbable. Surely they wouldn't be allowed here on campus if they couldn't be trusted with the students, but then Andre had said that there'd been similar complaints against the college in the past.

I had to tell someone what I suspected . . . but who? Liz Book was in no shape to take action maybe the vampires had felt free to prey on the students because they thought the dean was too weakened to do anything about it. Or maybe they were the ones who were making her so weak.

I was so distracted in class that I could barely pay attention. Fortunately I was showing a film: the original 1931 _Dracula_ with Bela Lugosi. It was not the best choice for a morning movie.

By the time the Count made his way to England, half the class was asleep and I didn't have the heart to nudge them awake. Instead of watching the film I studied the somnolent faces of my students, who looked, in the flickering reflection of the black and white film, as wan and lifeless as poor silly Lucy Westenra as she lay in her big Victorian bed drained by the Count. I couldn't see any bite marks on their necks. Besides, I'd read enough vampire books to know the neck wasn't the only place that could be bitten.

Five minutes before the end of class – just before Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker save Mina – I stopped the film and turned on the lights. My students blinked and covered their eyes like a pack of young vampires exposed to the sunlight, but instead of burning to a crisp they yawned and surreptitiously checked their laptops and cell phones for messages.

"So, do you think they're able to save Mina?" I asked the class, hoping that at least those who had read the book would have an answer.

But instead Nicky Ballard – who I was sure _had_ read the book, answered.

"What difference would it make? She's already been contaminated by Dracula. She'll never be the same."

I was so startled by the note of despair in Nicky's voice that I asked her to stay after class. I'd seen her name on the sign-in sheet at the infirmary and noticed that she seemed pale and tired, but it wasn't until I saw her close up that I realized how bad she really looked. Her skin was the blueish-white of skimmed milk, her eyes circled with purple rings, and her dark hair hung in oily strings around her face. Just a couple of weeks ago she looked happy and well-rested.

"Nicky, what's wrong? Are you sick?"

She shrugged. "They did a bunch of test at the infirmary, but they couldn't really find anything except a B-12 deficiency. I'm going for shots, but they're not really helping." She yawned.

"Are you sleeping okay?"

"No. I've been staying in the dorm again." A faint flush of pink rose in her cheeks, but the blush didn't bring any life to her face; it merely made her look feverish and drew attention to the rash on her forehead and around her mouth. "Our suite is kind of crowded because Alyssa asked Flonia to move in last term because I was always with Ben, but then Ben and I had a big fight last week and broke up and I had to move back into the dorm."

"I'm sorry, Nicky. I know how rough that is."

"You broke up with someone you really liked too, didn't you?"

I didn't really like to talk about my private life with my students, but Nicky was looking at me with such naked desperation that I didn't have the heart not to answer her question.

"Yes. It was painful, but then I realized we probably weren't really meant to be together romantically."

Nicky nodded and bit her lip.

"Then you met Professor West. So it was really all for the best. Flonia says a new relationship is the best cure for a broken heart."

"Well, it's a bit more complicated than that . . ." I begun, but then seeing the look on Nicky's face I paused. Here was a seventeen-year-old girl – almost eighteen – asking for my advice. So far I'd provided a model of a woman who leapt into a relationship with a stranger and asked said person to live with her, with barely a pause for breath. Is that what I wanted Nicky to do?

I imagined her jumping into bed with the next available person. Who knew? That might be how she would get pregnant and ruin her life or pick up an STI or STD.

"It's not such a good idea to rush into another relationship so soon when you're still hurting form the last. You're not in the best frame of mind for making decisions and you may wind up hurting yourself and the other person."

"But you and Professor West . . ."

"Are older and our circumstances were different . . . still, who knows how things will work out for us. At least we're mature enough to deal with the consequences of our mistakes. You should be concentrating on school right now and working on your own dream . . ."

"But that's just it!" Nicky cried, her face flushing red now. "I have these _awful dreams_. I'm lost in a frozen forest and I see these icicles hanging from the trees. They're like the ornaments people make around here, but in each one of these is a dream I once had – to be a writer, to be loved, to travel, to find my place in the world and they're all melting. I run from one to another, trying to catch my dreams before they melt and drip to the forest floor but they all run through my fingers. When I wake up I know that I'll never realize any of my dreams. I'll be like my mother. I'll live alone in that old house until I die."

"We all wonder at some point if we'll ever realize our dreams," I told Nicky, remembering moments in college when I thought my grandmother was probably right about me and I'd never amount to anything. I always had Cat there to tell me otherwise, though Nicky doesn't have that. "But that's just fear talking. It sneaks up on you when you're tired and sad and whispers bad stories in your ears."

Nicky looked up at me. "That's exactly what if feel like, Profess Vega! I wake up in the morning and it feels like someone's been whispering awful things in my ear all night long. That's why I'm so tired all the time. That whispering is keeping me up."

"Maybe you should sleep with earplugs," I suggested, only half kidding. "And lock your door at night," I added, wondering if Nicky's night-whispering might be one of the vampires stealing into her room.

Nicky wiped her eyes and managed a weak smile.

"The earplugs are actually a good idea. Alyssa and Flonia stay up late talking and it's hard to sleep hearing their voices." Nicky looked down at her watch. "Uh oh, I'm late for Ms. West's class. I'd better go. Thank you so much for listening to my silly little problems, Profess. It means a lot to me to have someone I can talk to."

"Anytime, Nicky. Really. If there's anything else you're worried about . . . anything that frightens you . . ."

"Thanks. And Ms. Vega? One more thing. I'll take your advice about not jumping into bed with another person right away, but I don't think you made a mistake hooking up with Ms. West. I think you guys are perfect for each other."

* * *

After Nicky left I stood in my empty classroom for a few minutes trying to decide what to do next. Normally I'd go to the library for an hour and then meet Alyssa in my office. Lately though I'd brought her back to Honeysuckle House in the afternoons.

Instinctively, I'd shied away from having her come when Jade was there. There seemed to be some antipathy between the two of them.

I'd chosen the hours when Jade was teaching her afternoon classes – and conducting the independent class with Nicky, to have her come over, but it was becoming exhausting keeping them apart. And it meant I wouldn't have a minute to myself for the rest of the afternoon. If I wanted to talk to Andre about the rash of student illnesses, I'd better do it now.

I took the back stairs so I wouldn't pass Jade's classroom. I knew it was silly – even if Jade saw me going up the stairs she'd just think I was going to my office, but I did it because I knew Jade would be jealous if she thought I was going to see Andre. I don't know why I knew that. It had been Andre who'd acted jealous of Jade, not the other way around.

Andre was in his office in his usual pose; feet up.

"Have you noticed that a lot of students are out sick?"

Andre took his feet off the desk and leaned forward. "Yes, I have, but colleges are hotbeds of germs. The infirmaries are probably full at most colleges."

"Are they full of cases of unexplained fatigue, anemia and weight loss?"

"Truthfully, those symptoms could be caused by pulling all nighters, living on bad cafeteria food and dealing with negative body image . . . but wait." He looked me up and down in a way that made me blush. "You've lost weight, too, haven't you? And you look tired."

"I am tired, even though I sleep all the time. Could . . ." I blushed again. "Could a person be bitten by a vampire and not know it?"

Andre got up from his chair and came around his desk. He brushed aside my hair and peered down at my neck before I had a chance to object to his examination. He swore, his breath tickling the skin behind my ear.

"I can't see in this light . . ." he grabbed me by the forearm, pulled me and sat me on the edge of his desk, and aimed his desk lamp at my neck. Her tilted my head right, then left, his voice crisp and business-like as he gave me a run-down on the vampire modus operandi.

"It is possible for a vampire to drink a victim's blood without him or her knowing. They would come at night, of course, but they must have previously been invited in. Have any of the Russian studies professors been to your house?"

"No," I answered, and then yelped as Andre slid his hand under my shirt.

"Sorry, just trying to be thorough. I don't see anything, but I'm afraid you'll have to check the femoral artery. Do you know where the femoral artery is?"

"Yes," I said, blushing even more.

"Do you sleep alone?" he asked.

"Uh . . . no . . ." I could feel the blood heating my whole chest now. I hoped Andre didn't think it was a reaction to his touch.

Because it wasn't.

"Then it's probably not a vampire attack. Still. I'll look into it."

The only thing he was looking into right now was my cleavage.

"Hey, I don't think vampires bite there."

"No?" Andre's mouth quirked into a crooked grin as he straightened the collar of my shirt. He was just stepping away when I heard a step behind him. I looked up, over Andre's shoulder, and saw Jade standing in the hall, her face white, eyes wide.

I opened my mouth to call her name, but she was already gone, vanished so quickly I almost thought I'd imagined her. But that was just wishful thinking.

I pushed Andre away – or tried to. Andre's chest was a solid obstacle.

"Jade?" he asked, pursing his lips to keep from grinning. "That probably didn't look so good from her angle."

"I've got to catch her." I tried pushing Andre again and this time he stepped aside.

"I'm sure you'll come up with a very reasonable explanation for why I had my hand down your shirt." He said not hiding his amusement. "Let me know what you come up with. I'll be happy to back you up."

"Just look into why all our students are getting sick," I snapped as I left the room. "I'll take care of Jade."

I found Jade's classroom empty except for a tow-headed boy sleeping with his head pillowed on his arms.

"Hey." I shook the boy's shoulder. When he looked up at me blearily I recognized him from his tattoo as the Weezer fan. "What happened to the creative writing class that meets in here?"

"Yeah, that's my class, man. I'm here. I made it to class."

"Uh huh, good for you. So where are the rest of the students and where's Ms. West?"

"Jade? Hey, she's cool . . ." The boy rubbed his eyes and looked around the classroom. "Hey, where'd everybody go?"

I sighed with frustration and turned to go but the boy grabbed my hand and pointed to the board.

"Look! Jade left me a note. How cool is that? She so wants me."

Written in Jade's elegant old-fashioned script were the words: _Wilder, I cancelled class due to low attendance. Go back to you room and get some sleep._

"How long ago . . .?" I started to ask Wilder, but when I turned around I saw he'd fallen back to sleep.

I searched everywhere. Her independent study with Nicky wasn't for another hour. There was no place else to look but home.

I could see her boot prints leading up the porch steps. There was a light on in the study. So she was home. I clasped my hand to my chest, conscious for the first time of how hard my heart was beating because I was afraid she'd be gone.

What was I going to say to her? How could I explain what she's seen? I could try telling her that Andre had been looking for a spider in my hair – but down my shirt? No, I'd never be able to tell that lie with a straight face.

Or I could tell her the truth. That I'd gone to Andre because I suspected the college's resident (and tenured!) vampires were helping themselves to student blood – and maybe mine, too. Why not? She grew up here. I could take her to Liz and Soheila to back up my story . . .

I stopped. I could only explain what happened in Andre's office by blowing Andre's cover – first to Jade and then potentially to anyone I asked to back up my story.

I opened the door, still without the slightest idea of what to say to Jade, and tripped over something in the foyer. Looking down I saw that it was a bird's nest with a cracked blue egg inside. I stared at it, trying to figure out how it had come to be in the foyer, and then remembered that it was one of the "finds" that Jade had brought back from her walks and left on the table in the foyer. I glanced at the table and saw that all the other object that were usually there had been swept onto the floor.

* * *

She was at her desk.

Her obsidian hair and eyes – sunken deep in their sockets – looked like part of the gathering shadows, as did the folds of her leather jacket. She looked like she might vanish if I blinked my eyes.

"Jade . . ." I said.

She raised her hand without turning to me.

"Don't," she said. "You don't have to explain. I understand."

"You do?" I stepped softly into the room and perched on the edge of the chair we'd bought in Bovine Corners a few weeks ago.

"Yes. I know we've gone too fast . . . that I never gave you time. It's natural you should have second thoughts."

"But I don't!" I cried, getting to my feet. "What you saw . . . it's not what you think. Andre . . ."

She twitched at Andre's name and held up her hand again. I noticed this time that it was trembling.

"It doesn't matter. I don't care about what you may or not have done. It's what you said to Nicky Ballard that upset me."

"What is said to Nicky?" I sank down into the chair, searching my mind for what she could mean. "I talked to Nicky about her break up . . ." and then I remembered. "She thought that finding a new partner was the best cure for heartbreak because she though that's what I had done."

"And is it?" she turned now. Her eyes were rimmed with red, the only color in her face. "Is that why you're with me? As a cure?"

"No," I said. "I know that's how it might look from outside, but you and me coming together . . ."

"But you said we might be a mistake."

"Nicky said that to you?"

"She wrote about it in the journal she turned in today."

"Oh," I said, trying to recall exactly what I'd said to Nicky. "I think what I actually said is that you and I are old enough to deal with the consequences of our mistakes. I didn't mean that us being together was a mistake."

Jade tilted her head and narrowed her eyes.

"From what I saw today you seem to be having second thoughts."

"Hey, a minute ago you said you didn't care about that! Anyway, it wasn't what it looked like."

Jade laughed. The sound startled me.

"That's exactly what the unfaithful lover always says in the movies when he or she gets caught."

"Oh, Jade, please. This isn't a movie!" I was beginning to get exasperated. "Sometimes I think you've learned everything you know about love from the movies"

The minute the words were out I regretted saying them. Jade was already getting up and reaching for the duffel bag at her feet, which I'd missed seeing until now.

"Jade," I cried, reaching for her, "I didn't mean . . ." but when I laid my hand on her she jerked her arm away as if my touch burned her. Her fingers clenched into a fist, her eyes dark and wild in her pale face. Then she turned and left, so quickly that I felt the air stir from her hair as it whipped around.

I stood staring after her.


	22. Chapter 22

AN:A group of organic molecules were having a party,when a group of robbers broke into the room and stole all of the guest's joules. A tall, strong man,armed with a machine gun came into the room and killed the robbers one by one. The guests were very grateful to this man, and they wanted to know who he was. He replied: My name is BOND, Covalent Bond.

* * *

I didn't get much chance to dwell on the fight.

Fifteen minutes after Jade left Alyssa showed up for her work-study assignment. Most college freshmen would have taken my failure to show up at my office as an opportunity to take the afternoon off, but not Alyssa.

"I wasn't sure if you'd want to get some more work done on the Dahlia LaMotte papers. They are so very fascinating."

Alyssa had found some unpublished manuscripts and journals that told the tale of a Dahlia LaMotte who had the same experiences I had. When I asked Jade what they were doing in the attic she said that they were Eugenia's and then continued to _distract me._

Normally I would agree, but the last thing I wanted to do that afternoon was catalog the romantic fantasies of a reclusive spinster – especially with Alyssa, who had a way of zeroing in on the most erotic passages. I hadn't really intended for Alyssa to read the more salacious material in the handwritten manuscripts; I'd only asked her to make a record of how many pages Dahlia wrote each day.

But it was impossible to keep Alyssa from reading the material and she often picked the raciest scenes to read aloud, asking for embarrassing explanations of sexual terms. Whenever she came across a word she didn't know she would come sit beside me – quite close – and point to the word.

I wondered sometimes if she wasn't deliberately trying to make me uncomfortable, or if she might even be trying to make a sexual advance. It made for some long, awkward afternoons, but on this afternoon she did make an interesting discovery.

"I've noticed," she said, looking up from the yellow legal pad on which she kept her page tallies, "that there's a correlation between Miss LaMotte's output and the sex scenes."

"Really?" I asked, intrigued.

"Yes, look . . ."

Alyssa come over to where I was sitting on the floor and knelt beside me. She put the yellow legal pad in my lap and reached across me, her arm brushing against my shoulder.

"I put asterisks wherever a romantic interaction occurs, one for a meaningful glance, two for a kiss and three for actual intercourse . . ."

"I think I get the idea. What exactly is the correlation you see?"

"Well, look at the page tallies. In between the meaningful glance and the kissing scenes Miss LaMotte writes an average of ten to fifteen pages a day." She flipped the pages of the notepad and I saw scores of asterisks dotting the pages.

So many kisses, I thought trying to remember the last time Jade had kissed me. Would it be the last time?

"Then between the first kiss and the intercourse she writes an average of twenty to thirty pages a day, the number escalating sometimes to as many as sixty pages a day as she gets closer to the intercourse scene."

"Really?" I asked distracted from my memories of Jade's kisses by Alyssa's discovery. I picked up the pad and shifted my weight so that Alyssa wasn't quite so _close_. "That is interesting."

"What's really interesting is that after the intercourse scene the page tallies decrease again. Sometimes she doesn't even write anything for a few days. It's as if she's worn out."

I flipped through the pages. Alyssa was right. There was a definite pattern. It was as if she became increasingly excited as the sexual tension between her characters mounted and then suffered a sort of sympathetic post-coital slump after they finally made love.

"Alyssa, that's a really important discovery. Thank you very much."

Alyssa smiled a rare smile and her cheeks glowed pink. She looked almost pretty. The poor girl, I thought, she gets so little encouragement, I really should make more of an effort with her . . . invite her over with some of the other students for dinner sometime . . . but not tonight, I thought, yawning, I just wanted to crawl into bed and go to sleep tonight.

"Why don't we call it a day." I said, getting to my feet.

Alyssa looked disappointed but then brightened.

"Can we work again tomorrow?" she asked.

"Sure," I said, even though tomorrow wasn't one of our scheduled days. I might as well throw myself into my work to distract myself from replaying in my head the fight I'd had with Jade.

* * *

After Alyssa left I made myself a cup of green tea and took it upstairs to my bedroom. The house felt hollow and empty without Jade there. I went into her study and looked out the window across the street to the inn to see if there was a light on in her old room. There wasn't. Had she gone somewhere else? Or taken a different room? Or was she there and sleeping soundly, undisturbed by our fight?

Before I left the room, I noticed that she'd piled the grey stones into a small pillar – as if she'd been fashioning a grave cairn. They looked so eerie like, that I unpiled them.

As tired as I was I still couldn't sleep that night. Even the racy Dahlia manuscripts failed to distract me. I'd come to the part where the heroine is finally to be ransomed back to her royal fiancé. The succubus had come to her one last night before Dahlia was to leave . . .

_. . . Like a storm at sea come to capsize my resolve. "Will your young lord do this to you?" she growled, sinking her face to my breast and licking my nipples until they hardened. "Or this?" grasping my hips and grinding against me, but then pulling back, teasing me as I thrust upwards. I no longer cared about my husband to be. I wrapped my legs around her hips and pulled her to me. "You have conquered me. It is I who am your captive."_

And even though I knew full well that by logic she would end up with the Viking. The last page still filled my eyes with tears when the succubus gave her the key to her cell as a final parting gift and she read the note tied to it with a scarlet ribbon.

"_I give you the key to your freedom, but can you give me back the key to my heart?"_

When I turned out the lights Jade's side of the bed – how had we ended up with sides so quickly? – Yawned like an icy crevasse I might fall into if I relaxed a muscle. I lay tensed, replaying our argument, trying to come up with some other way I could make it come out differently, but instead I kept coming up with the same interlocking loops. I'd doubted that we were right together and told Nicky that we might be a mistake, and then I ended up in Andre's office letting him put his hand down my shirt.

Maybe Jade and I had moved to fast. What did I really know about her? There was always a piece of herself that she kept to herself. Was I looking for a way out of the relationship? Was that why I went to his office with the idea about vampires because really, I'm the one who knows more about vampires and I could have looked down my own shirt for fang marks.

I kicked the sheets, which had become as tangled as my thoughts, and they fell to the floor and lay in the moonlight like snowdrifts.

I got up and walked to the window. The moon was bright in the sky throwing shadows across the clean expanse of the backyard, reaching towards the house.

One of those shadows detached itself from the edge of the woods and scuttled across the lawn.

The shadow-crab!

I ran downstairs and pulled on a hoody that had _Jeff The Killer_ on the back? . . . Jade's . . .a smile graced my face when I remembered her face when it came in the mail.

I opened the door slowly, watching for any movement in the shadows. It might be lurking by the door, trying to find a way in to do away with Ralph.

I stepped into the moonlit night, closing the door behind me.

The moonlight sparkled everywhere but the shadows. I studied each shadow carefully, comparing it to the object that made it for any suspicious lumps or movements. There was nothing.

Then a wind moved through the yard. One of the shadow branches cast by the old lilac seemed to swell. I stepped toward it, stepping across the shadow of the stonewall, and felt something brush against my ankle.

I looked down and saw the shadow-crab scuttling towards the back door. I dove for it with the creel open in my hands . . . and missed. The shadow-crab dodged and headed back towards the woods. I scrambled to my feet and chased after it, stumbling on the grass.

If it made it to the woods I'd never catch it – and Ralph would pine away and die in the Shadow Land. It was nearly at the edge of the woods . . . about to merge with a large-woman shaped shadow . . .

The shadow stepped forward and I reared back.

I looked up, fearing some horrible shadow-monster, but instead I saw Jade's face, pale and dim in the shadows.

"Jade! What are you doing here?"

"I couldn't sleep without you, so I went for a walk in the woods. Then I heard a noise from the house and thought somebody might be trying to break in. What were _you_ doing?"

"You couldn't sleep without me?" I asked, ignoring her question. "I couldn't sleep without you either."

She took another step forward to the edge of the shadows.

The moonlight touched the top of her hair, but her face was still in shadow and somehow wavery, as if she were underwater or dissolving – but then I realized that was because my eyes had filled with tears.

"Oh Jade, I'm so sorry, I don't think we're a mistake, and I don't want anyone else, I just want you."

She stepped toward me, full into the moonlight, her body taking shape in the light, and pulled me into her arms, which were icy cold but when I slid my hands under her shirt and found her mouth I felt a spark of heat leap up to meet me. She moaned and slid her hands down my back and to my thighs, lifting me off my feet. I wrapped my legs around her hips.

She stumbled, but then pushed me up against a pine tree, hard enough that the tree moved. The tree, forest and the whole shadowy night watched as she slid her hand down in between our bodies and into my pants, circling my clit with her finger and teasing me around my wet entrance until I pushed into her hand so that she entered me. She used her hips, thrusting onto her hand forcing her to reach deep within me, curling her fingers every once in a while until I came undone.

After, Jade carried me upstairs to our bed we lay side by side. I found I couldn't keep my hands or eyes off her. As if I had to convince myself that she was real. When I closed my eyes I saw her dissolving into the shadows and I would startle awake as though I was the one falling backwards into darkness.


	23. Chapter 23

I woke up tired as hell, but when Jade wrapped her arms around me from behind I couldn't help but eagerly turn to her and jump her bones – making me late for class.

"Did you and Jadey make up?" Andre asked me as I hobbled past his office.

I looked anxiously up and down the hall to make sure Jade wasn't anywhere nearby – I certainly didn't want her to see me with Andre again so soon – before answering.

"We're fine. She just had a jealous moment, but I explained that there was absolutely nothing to be jealous about and we made up." I smiled brightly, hiding a wince; even my lips were sore from Jade's kisses.

"Great," Andre said. "Then she won't mind if you come in here and sit down for a moment. I have something important to discuss with you."

I glanced behind me again and noticed Andre smiling when I turned back. Then I strode firmly into his office and plopped myself down in the chair in front of his desk, wishing I'd finessed my landing a little more gently.

Andre got up and shut the door.

"I don't think that's a good idea," I objected.

Andre sat down on the edge of his desk.

"We can't risk anyone overhearing this. There's more than your girlfriend's delicate feelings at stake here."

I opened my mouth to object again but realized I'd get out of here quicker if I didn't argue.

"What is it?"

"I checked in with our resident vampires last night and I don't think they're the ones who are preying on the students."

"Why? Because they told you they weren't?"

"No, because I watched them all night and the only blood they drank was imported."

"Imported?"

"As in not local. Three people arrived at their house last night – all over twenty-one, none glamoured – to volunteer their services."

"Ew. Why would anyone do that?"

"One was a middle-aged woman who's writing a paranormal romance and considers herself the luckiest person on the planet to have found real live – or real undead – vampires who are such gentlemen. That's what she told me when I stopped her leaving their house near dawn. The other two were a couple from Manhattan who are trying to spice up their marriage . . ."

"Okay, maybe I don't want to know anymore."

"Good call. There are some images I'd rather not have in my head either." Andre smiled.

"But just because the vampires weren't stalking students last night doesn't mean they don't ever."

"No, but I also went by the infirmary and had a little chat with the night nurse. There are no bite marks on any of the students and when I spoke to Flonia Rugova she had no memory – conscious or unconscious – of a vampire attack."

"How is she by the way?" I asked.

"She's very weak and appears to have suffered some short-term memory loss, but seems to be recovering. I told the nurse she shouldn't have any visitors."

"But if it's not the vampires draining the students . . ."

"I don't know. I'm going to track Flonia's progress. How do you feel?"

"I feel fine. I think it was just a virus, but I'm over it now." I got to my feet and gave Andre a wide smile to keep from wincing at the soreness in my legs. "I've never felt better."

But I couldn't help thinking: if not a vampire, then who – or what – was draining the students. What else could it be but a succubus?

I considered telling Andre my suspicions, but if I did I'd have to also tell him that Soheila was a succubus. Somehow I couldn't bear to betray her secret, knowing how Soheila felt about that. Unless, of course, it was her draining the students.

* * *

I started keeping track of the students who got sick and then seeing whether they had any contact with Soheila. Both Nicky and Flonia were in Soheila's introduction to Middle Eastern Mythology class. So was Scott Wilder, who got so sick he had to take a leave of absence. And of course the dean had had ample contact with Soheila. But when I went to see Liz to share my concerns with her I found her completely recovered.

He eyes were sharp again, her skin smooth and pink, her silver hair coiled into a gleaming chignon.

I told her my suspicion that the "flu" that was going around might be caused by a succubus.

"I suppose that's possible, but the only succubus on campus is . . . Oh! You can't mean Soheila? She would never do such a thing! And especially not to students!"

I felt instantly guilty for even suggesting the possibility but I persevered.

"If not Soheila, then is it possible that there's a succubus – or incubus – on campus we don't know about? I mean, you don't always know who is and who isn't a supernatural creature, do you?"

"No," Liz frowned. "I'm afraid it's not always possible to tell. With you, we suspected something, but if someone really wanted to hide their true nature . . . oh my, it would be awful if I hired a succubus or incubus who was draining the students. I'd never forgive myself!" she looked stricken. "I'm going to do a thorough background check on everyone. I'll ask Alyssa to help me . . . if you can spare her."

"Sure," I said a little to readily. As useful as Alyssa had been I'd found our sessions awkward and exhausting – especially now that she was focusing on the erotic passages. I wouldn't mind having my afternoons free again. I was actually disappointed when Alyssa volunteered to do both jobs but told myself that I was being ungenerous.

As the semester went on fewer students got sick and many who had been sick recovered. The exceptions were Nicky who became so sick she had to move back home and Flonia.

I went to the infirmary to visit Flonia but the nurse said she was not allowed any visitors as of yet.

Nurse Kotter yawned and arched her back, kneading her sacrum with one hand, a gesture that made me feel the ache in my own back.

"Most of them get better with a little a rest. I hear Nicky Ballard's still pretty bad, though. I'm afraid that fool mother of hers has got her running around taking care of her duties instead of resting."

"Hmm. Maybe I should drop by and see how she's doing," I said, seeing the possibility of an afternoon nap slipping away.

"If you do, could you take these supplements with you? I ordered them for Nicky and called JayCee to pick them up, but she said she was too busy," she snorted. "Can you imagine? Too busy to pick up her sick daughter's vitamins?"

* * *

Before I left campus I texted Jade to tell her I'd meet at her home later. She texted me back to say she had an appointment with the dean and would be back around five.

I walked out he southeast gate, passed my house with a longing look, and turned down Elm Street.

The Ballard house looked more decrepit than ever in the sunshine. I saw boot prints on the front lawn and wondered who could have planted them. Maybe one of JayCee's many men?

I knocked on the door and waited. I could hear a radio playing inside – the college station – and an occasional thump. I knocked again and heard some muttered curses. Then the door was yanked open. JayCee Ballard, in the middle of lighting a cigarette, scowled when she saw it was me.

"Let me guess, you're here to check up on Nicky. Don't you people have any other students to worry about up at the college of yours?"

"Why, has someone else been to visit?"

JayCee squinted through her cigarette smoke and then smiled slyly. She folded her arms across her faded Phish logo on her tight ribbed tank top.

"So you didn't know your girlfriend came here this morning. Inner-resting . . . she even brought muffins! Can you feature that? A gank bringing muffins and being friendly? And not to mention her constant staring at my tits."

"Oh, Jade was here?" I said, trying not sound surprised. "She did say she was going to drop by sometime. I didn't realize she got around to doing it. I'd like to see Nicky, too I've got some vitamins for her." I took the bottle out from my pocket and JayCee snatched them out of my hand.

"I'll give 'em to her. She's asleep. You're girlfriend's visit tired her out. If I find out there's any funny business going on between them I'll sue that college for sex harassment."

"It's sexual harassment and Jade would never take advantage of a student," I sputtered.

"She was holed up in Nicky's room for half an hour. Nicky said they were talking about her poetry, but I saw her eyes. Bedroom eyes, if you know what I mean."

To my horror, I blushed.

"I guess you do know what I mean." JayCee snickered.

"My advice to you, honey, is keep your woman satisfied so she don't go prowling around here looking for younger meat."

With that sage advice delivered, JayCee slammed the door in my face.

I retreated down the steps and noticed the boot prints did match Jade's shoes. So JayCee hadn't been lying about her visiting. Which was no big deal.

So why did I feel funny about it? Surely I wasn't taking JayCee's obscene hints seriously. Jade would never take advantage of a student that way. But still there was something about Jade visiting Nicky that bothered me . . .

"Yoo hoo! Yoo hoo!"

The call, which might have belonged to a migratory waterfowl, pierced my consciousness as I was stomping up Elm Street. I turned and found a petite middle-aged woman in a bright red sweater and jeans waving at me from the front porch of a Craftsman bungalow, a glance at the R.V in the driveway suggested they were back from wherever.

"Hello?" I answered back, holding my hand over my eyes to shade the glare. "Are you talking to me?"

The woman came down her steps.

"We came back early and we've found that we've been broken into! Harold's on the phone with the sheriff. Can you believe it? Here in Fairwick? I'm Cheryl Wilder, by the way, but everyone calls me Cherry." She held her hand out towards me.

"Tori Vega, I'm at the college, your son stays at campus?"

"Yes, that's right. We noticed some charges on our credit cards and movies that were bought on our account but thought it was our son, when we called he knew nothing of it, that's why we returned."

"Well that is upsetting," I agreed, unsure what the woman wanted me to do about her problem. "But if you haven't seen any more fraudulent charges maybe it was just a vagrant . . ."

"Do you think?" she asked, laying her hand on my arm.

Thankfully her husband showed up.

"The sheriff's on his way, Cherry baby, he says we need to make a list of everything that's missing."

"Oh," Cherry said, squeezing my arm. "I'd best go in. thank you for being such a good listener! I just had to tell someone! And I'm glad to meet you. Sinjin told me we had a nice new lady professor at the college. You'll have to join our book club and Friday night movie club. We watch classics and new movies, so you won't feel left out we do have younger people in our clubs. My favorites are the romantic comedies . . ."

I'd been trying to come up with a polite way to get away from Cherry when the words _romantic comedies_ brought me up short.

"Which movies did the thief buy?" I asked, interrupting Cherry's personal review of the Nancy Meyers film.

Cherry Wilder blinked at my rudeness, but recovered herself quickly and turned to her husband.

"Do you remember?"

"I made a list." He said taking a folded piece of paper out of his shorts pocket. "Let's see . . ." while he adjusted a pair of bifocals on his sunburned nose I suppressed the urge to throttle him. "_Beauty and the Beast_ – the French one, not Disney –_ It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story, You've Got Mail and When Harry Mat Sally."_

"Apparently a fan of romantic comedy!" Cherry exclaimed. "Those movies are practically primers on the art of love!"

"Yes, a person could learn a lot from those movies." Like how to lie to your girlfriend, I reflected bitterly.

"And those credit charges do you know what companies they were from?"

"Oh yes, all online._ VampireFreaks, ScarletsAndHarlets, Blue Banana, Destiny Store_. This is why we thought it was our son."

"Oh," I said, feeling my heart grow heavy in my chest. "I guess not a lot of people are to fond of those stores around here."

"No! But you poor thing, you look pale!"

"I think . . . I think I'd better go home now."

"You do that, dear. And make sure to lock your doors. Who knows? Our home invader might still be lurking around."

I walked back to the house going over what I'd learned from the Wilder's. The day I banished the succubus someone had broken into their house and used their credit card to but clothes from the same catalog companies that Jade favored, and then less than two weeks later Jade West showed up in Fairwick.

When I turned the corner onto my street I saw three women sitting on my porch. Two of the women were the same as the ones who had arrived the night of the banishing: Diana Hart and Soheila Lilly. The third was Fiona The Fairy Queen.

As I walked up my porch steps my legs felt heavy. I had been feeling tired lately, hadn't I?

"You don't have to do an intervention," I said. "I know what you're here to tell me. Jade West is the succubus."


	24. Chapter 24

"Aren't you the clever one!" Fiona said. "It took you long enough to realize."

"That's not fair," Diana pointed out. "You didn't know either."

"Well," Fiona huffed, "She wouldn't let me get close to her and she was so very solid I thought she couldn't really be my succubus. You made her incarnate, Tori. It's very impressive, actually. In order for a succubus to become flesh her love object has to have a strong mind and strong desires. You must have wanted her to become flesh."

I shook my head.

"I tried to vanquish her. You saw me do it!" I turned to Soheila and Diana. Soheila, who hadn't spoken a word yet looked stricken, but remained silent. Diana looked unhappy, too, but she answered me.

"We saw you go through with the ceremony, Tori, and I'm sure you_ meant_ well, but we couldn't see what was in your heart. No one can see that . . ." she glanced at Fiona with a nervous but determined look. "No one is saying you brought her to life intentionally."

Fiona glared at Diana, but reluctantly agreed. "No I suppose not intentionally."

"But," Diana continued, turning so pale under Fiona's disapproval that her freckles stood out, "If you had just the teeniest bit of hesitation when you performed the rite . . . if just a little bit of you wanted the succubus to stay, then it might have been enough to allow her to become flesh."

I stared at Diana, remembering the night before we'd vanquished the succubus. Had I harbored a small desire to keep her with me?

"But," I said, noticing a look of triumph pass over Fiona's face and one of even greater sadness over Soheila's. "How did she do it? I mean you all knew Jade! How could she be a spirit and a person! And what about Liz? She said nothing about this!" I cried.

"Liz was charmed by her and so was everyone who knew her, and I thought she finally broke Fiona's spell and was human again." Diana said.

"And you . . . " I said, turning to Fiona. "Are you suggesting that Jade is the succubus you knew from hundreds of years ago. Didn't you recognize her?"

"I suspected it was her, but I couldn't be sure. I have to have actual physical contact in order to tell and when I lured her into the cloakroom to kiss her you interrupted us."

"But she didn't _want to kiss you_, did she?"

"No . . . she probably knew that it would give her away."

"Or she just didn't want to kiss you because she liked me better."

Fiona's eyes blazed and she seemed to grow three inches taller.

"Remember she's still under her power," Diana told Fiona in a small voice. "She is not responsible for what she says."

"I know exactly what I'm saying!"

Fiona and Diana remained silent at my outburst, but Soheila finally spoke.

"Tori, we have proof that there is a succubus-like creature sucking the life force out of students on campus. All her victims – Dean Book, Flonia Rugova , Scott Wilder, and Nicky Ballard – had the same symptoms. I should have known but I like to think that one of my kind would not behave so . . . so indiscriminately. Preying on young people!" she made a face. "Even my sisters are more principled. But when I visited Nicky and held her hand I could feel the signature of the succubus"

"Before you said succubus_-like_," I pointed out.

"There are a number of creatures who prey on the life force of humans – incubi, succubi, love talkers, lamias, lideres, undines. They're all related. I can feel the presence of a creature feeding off the life force . . ." she reached out her hand to grasp mine and I took a step backwards . . . right into Fiona. It was like stepping into a wall of ice.

Soheila reached for my hand. I tried to pull away, but Fiona held me steady with a touch on my arm that was light but compelling. I was powerless to move away. Soheila took my hand in both of hers. She closed her eyes and stroked my skin. Her eyes moved rapidly back and forth beneath her eyelids as if she were dreaming . . . then flicked open, releasing a tear that slid down her cheek.

"I can feel her, Tori. Her presence is strong in you. I can feel her love . . ."

"A succubus is incapable of love," Fiona hissed. "And if she did love Tori why would she prey on all those students? Does she love them, too?"

I turned away from Soheila to face Fiona.

"I can't believe she preyed on her students."

"She'd have to if you weren't enough to satisfy her."

My hand was in the air headed towards Fiona's mocking smile before I knew I meant to slap her, but Soheila and Diana grabbed me before I could make contact. A wind knocked the tree of us back against the wall of the house and a white light blinded me. I heard Fiona's voice inside my brain, piercing my head like an ice pick.

_Don't you ever defy me again; little doorkeeper, or I will turn you into dust. I spare you now only so you can send your demon back to the Borderlands. I want her to know what it feels like to be rejected by the one she desires."_

A high-pitched screech filled my brain – I felt sure my head was going to explode – and then it was gone, leaving an ache, a ringing in my ears and a coppery taste in my mouth. I fell to my knees and threw up. Dimly I felt Diana holding my hair back and Soheila murmuring.

"It's okay, she's gone. She's angry because Jade had chosen you over her, but she knows she can't destroy you. Even the Queen of Fairies needs a doorkeeper to open the door to Faerie."

"She said she spared me so I'd send Jade back, so she'd know what it felt like to be rejected by someone she loved . . . but she herself said that a succubus couldn't love . . . and if Jade really is the succubus . . ." another wave of nausea rose from my stomach as the reality finally penetrated. Jade, whose body I knew so intimately, was not made of flesh and blood, but was a creature of the shadow and the moonlight, a golem fashioned from the clay of my own lust.

"If she's a succubus . . . if she's lied to me and fed off her students . . . then she doesn't love me. She can't love anyone."

Soheila winced but said nothing. Diana smoothed my hair back from my damp forehead.

"I think she must love you as best as she can," Diana said. "But it doesn't matter. You have to send her back. She'll suck you dry if you don't"

Soheila nodded. "Diana's right. She can't help it. It's how she's made."

"But then how am I supposed to make Jade leave?"

Soheila and Diana looked at each other and for a moment I thought – hoped? – They would throw up their hands and tell me they had no idea.

_Oops, sorry, once a succubus is made flesh there's no way to disincarnate her. You're stuck. You'll have to make the best of the situation_.

But instead, at a nod from Soheila, Diana took out her phone and called someone.

"She's ready," she said without greeting, and then hung up without a good bye.

"Neither Soheila nor I can help you with this part, Tori, because we can't handle iron. Robbie will explain what to do."

"Wait a minute," I said as both women got to their feet. "If a succubus doesn't like iron, then why are all her victims drained of iron?"

Diana bobbed her head up and down. "Good question. It's not fully understood, but apparently there's a sort of symbiotic relationship that develops between the succubus and her victims that makes the victim shed iron so that the succubus can continue feeding. If we understood it better then the succubi" she glanced at Soheila "could have a normal relationship with humans."

Soheila smiled at Diana but shook her head.

"We have to go. The iron that Robbie has forged is powerful. Diana and I can't be near it." She took my hand in hers. "Remember, she can't help what she is, but if she truly loves you she doesn't want to destroy you. She'll be better in the long run banished to the Borderlands than living with your death." Soheila gave my hand one last squeeze and got up to go. Diana patted my shoulder and followed her. I got up, too – mostly to move away from the place where I had thrown up – and met Robbie on the steps.

"I'm so sorry, Tori. I just never thought that she could become flesh – she never did all the years she haunted Dahlia."

I just stood staring at him.

"I don't think she loved Dahlia like she loves you though . . ." he opened a box; two bracelets made of iron braided into intricate designs. At the center of each know was a keyhole. An iron key attached to a chain lay between the two bracelets.

"You'll have to slip these on her wrists." He showed me how they opened and clicked shut. "And then you'll have to turn the key in each lock. Keep the key around your neck and she won't be able to touch you."

"And you think she'll stand still for that?"

"Once the iron's on her wrists she won't be able to move. Just make sure you turn the key to the right. If you turn it to the left, you'll unlock the bracelets and she'll be free. Then . . . well, she's sure to be angry and you saw what she did the last time she was angry."

I shuddered, recalling the destruction of the storm. Could that really have been Jade? Could I really believe that of her? A part of my brain – and heart – still resisted the idea, but the evidence was overwhelming. My own doubts . . . well, as Diana had said I was still under her power. I couldn't trust my instincts.

"The dean agreed to keep Jade in her office until she got a call from me. If you're ready I'll call now."

"Wait. There's one other thing. If I do this . . . if I put these things on her, what happens to her?"

"She's banished to the Borderlands between this world and Faerie. The iron will keep her from materializing in this world, but it will also keep her from being able to enter Faerie since nothing iron can pass through the door."

"Does it . . . hurt?" I asked.

"Robbie didn't answer at first. I could tell he was considering whether to lie, but I held his gaze and he finally nodded.

"Yes, it will hurt her. She'll be bound in pain for all eternity, imprisoned with all the other tortured souls who have lost their way between worlds. My people call this place Niflheim, or Fog world, where dwells a goddess whose house is called Rain-Damp; her plate, Hunger; her knife, Starving; her threshold, Stumbling-Block; her bed, Sickbed; her bed hangings, Misfortune. From her name, Hel, comes your Hell. She'll drain you dry if you don't banish her." He placed the box in my hands and then turned and left without another word.

Leaving me with the means of torturing my lover for all eternity.

* * *

I took the box inside and stuck it in the pantry with the cleaning supplies and the mousetraps I'd bought and never used. Great, I thought, I couldn't use a mousetrap. What were the chances I was going to use a succubus trap on the woman I . . .

Loved?

Did I love Jade? I'd never said it to her. I'd told her that I wanted her, but I never said _I love you._

Did I?

I opened the pantry again and took out what I needed to clean the porch. It was funny how cleaning vomit seemed better at the moment.

I scrubbed until the paint started coming off the porch boards and I'd mixed a pint of my tears in with the dirty water.

I went back into the kitchen and took the box Robbie gave me and placed it on the table, then opened it.

I squeezed the two iron bracelets into the two front pockets of my jeans and slipped the chain with the key over my head, sliding the key under my shirt where it lay against my breastbone, cold and heavy as my heart. Then I sat down on the couch in the living room – not the library where Jade and I had watched movies and made love – and waited for Jade to come home.

The minute I wasn't moving my mind became active again.

What if it was all a mistake? A desperate voice whined inside my head. My Jade would never harm students or me.

I heard the key click in the lock. _There!_ It was an iron lock and an iron key. If Jade was a succubus she couldn't use it could she? I was so excited by the discovery that I leapt to my feet and ran to meet her at the door.

She was in the foyer, her head bowed, a lock of hair falling over her eyes as she closed the door behind her. She slid the key back into her wallet – a leather wallet with VF stamped on the outside – and took off her leather gloves. She never touched the iron key or doorknob.

She looked up. The lock of hair still in her face, like the wing of a black bird.

"Tori. What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

She took a step forward and I stepped back.

"Hey," she said, her voice husky. "Are you upset I'm late? Didn't you get my text?"

"Yes," I answered, sliding my hands in my pockets. "What did the dean want?"

"Damned if I know. I think she might be going senile . . . she just kept me there talking about poetry, then she got a phone call and forced me to have coffee with her, it was strange . . . but not as strange as how you're looking at me right now." She took another step forward – into a swath of blue light from the fanlight that cast a deathly pall over her features – and reached for me.

I knew that if I let her touch me it would be all over. Already I could feel myself melting into her eyes. I'd let her kiss me and make love to me right there on the foyer floor. So what if she was a succubus?

She was_ my_ succubus.

I pulled my hands out of my pockets and, as she reached for me, desire and concern mixed in her eyes, I clamped the iron bracelets around her wrists.

The effect was instantaneous. She fell to her knees like a puppet whose strings had been cut, her iron-bound wrists clanking loudly on the wooden floor. My name in her throat came out a scream of agony.

"Good," I said, making my voice cold. "You can still talk. I wasn't sure if you'd be able to, and I think you owe me an explanation."

She lifted her head – slowly, painfully – and looked at me out of the hollow shadowy pits that her eyes had become.

Her skin, always pale, had gone nearly translucent. They only color in her face come from the play of light from the fanlight which spread itself on the floor around her like stage lights.

"You know . . . what I am . . . what more . . . do you want to know?" she gasped through gritted teeth.

I knelt down so I could look straight into her eyes.

"I want to know why you picked me and what you intended to do with me. When you drained me dry would you have gone to another victim?"

She shook her head slowly, like an injured animal.

"I didn't . . . pick you. You . . . picked me. You wanted . . . me." She took a long shuddering breath and then her words seemed to come easier. "You wanted me enough to give me flesh . . . even as you were telling me to leave, I felt your pity for what had happened to me. And I heard you answering my question . . ."

"What question?"

"I asked you what more you wanted and you told me . . . in between the words of the banishment . . . you told me you wanted decency and caring and someone who really bothered to see who she was trying to seduce." She looked up at me. "Haven't I given you those things, Tori? I care about you. I spent three months getting to know you . . . really know you . . . and falling in love with you"

I shook my head.

"You lied to me. It was all a lie!"

"No, Tori, you could feel my love before I was flesh and you loved me once too a long time ago, but I was seduced away by a fairy temptress. You've met her. You've seen how powerful she is."

"Fiona? The Fairy Queen?"

"Yessss." She hissed the word. "She stole me. I was her captive. She kept me in Faerie so long I lost my humanity . . . I faded into the shadow . . . only a human's desire can give me flesh, and only a human's love can give me a soul. But still I broke away . . .when we were on the march to the door, I broke away and came for _you,_ Victoria . . ."

The dreams rose up inside me again: the long march, my comrades fading around me, the dark figure on the white horse coming towards me, her hands reaching for me . . . I looked up at Jade.

I felt the iron key, hot now, burning against my bare skin.

_Turn right to send her to the Borderlands, left to free her._

"So you're saying that I'm . . . what? The reincarnation of the girl you loved centuries ago? Is that why you want me? Because I remind you of her?"

She shook her head.

"No. I love who_ you_ are . . . if you loved me, I could be mortal again."

"Then I must not love you," I said, pointing at her iron cuffed hands. "Or those wouldn't be bothering you."

"No. You don't love me . . . yet . . . but you are so close to loving me. I can feel it." She lifted one hand. It was a struggle, I could see, but still she lifted it and brought her hand to my face.

_She won't be able to move,_ Robbie had said. So if she was moving it meant the iron only had some effect on her . . . and maybe that was because I almost loved her. How hard would it be to really love her? And then she would become fully human and we could be together.

She pulled me towards her. Her hand shaking with the effort. Her lips when they touched mine were on fire. They seared my skin like a hot brand, but I didn't care. I opened my lips for her and felt the heat of her flooding me.

She was sucking the life force out of me . . .

I pushed her back.

"No!" I cried, "You lied to me. I could hear the indecision in my voice, feel my resolve wavering. "How can I trust anything you say?"

"_Is a lie really the worst thing if it's told out of love?_"

I smiled sadly and touched her hand. I saw where the iron had burned through her skin. There was no bone there, only if darkness – the shadow she came out of and would return to if I didn't do something soon.

I pulled the key pulled the key out from under my shirt. If I released her we could still be together and when I loved her, she'd become mortal. We could be together without her draining me dry . . .

I had already fitted the key into the keyhole of the left bracelet, but stopped and looked into the shadowy pits that had been her eyes.

"The students," I said. "And Liz. You were feeding on them."

She flinched.

"No!" she cried. "I would never . . ."

"Then why have they been getting sick? Flonia who you see every day? Nicky, who you went to visit? Even poor Scott Wilder . . ." I froze. "All the students who were sick were in your class. You were feeding on them." My stomach clenched, nausea rising in me again.

I tried to find something in her eyes to convince me that I was wrong, but there was nothing but darkness.

"I didn't, Tori, I swear."

But how could I trust her?

I turned the key right. She screamed. The sound tore through me, but I made myself move the key to the bracelet on her right hand. I looked up into her face and saw that the shadows where spreading out from her eyes, eating into her flesh. She was dissolving right in front of me. Turning back into the darkness she was made of. How could I love that darkness?

But I knew even as I saw her dissolving in front of me that it was the darkness in her that called to me. I still wanted her. I looked down at my hand where she now gripped my wrist. My own skin was dissolving under her touch, merging with her. I felt the pull of her, like an undertow dragging me out to sea. I might not love her, but I wanted her more than I'd ever wanted anyone or anything.

That might not be enough for us to stay together in the light but maybe it was enough for us to stay together in the dark.

All I had to do was . . . nothing. As long as I didn't turn the key in the second lock I would dissolve with her.

I lowered my hand . . . and waited, my eyes locked on hers. She saw what decision I'd made. In what was left of her eyes I saw surprise and heard a gasp from what was left of her mouth. I felt her grip loosen my wrist.

She held out her arms to me. I closed my eyes and dropped the key to hold her . . . as we embraced I felt the darkness rush around me with a sound like wings. I opened my eyes and saw a wasteland of shadows – no color, no light, no heat. Ghost-like shapes flitted around me like bats. I recognized them as my comrades from the long march.

It seemed only right to join them with my demon lover.

A tug brought me back into the real world, into the foyer of Honeysuckle House crouched beside Jade, who had all but dissolved into the shadows. She was holding the key to the lock on her right hand bracelet. She inserted the key in the lock . . . and turned it to the right.

"Why?" I screamed.

"I couldn't let you destroy yourself for me."

They were the last words that she spoke before her lips dissolved. I reached for her, but she was already gone – a shadow that melted into the colored light pooling on the floor beneath me.

* * *

AN: Okay then, hate me … all you want … I know you are planning ways to kill me right now. So that was that, I loved this chapter. Also I am hyped on energy drinks at the moment and it's 3am where I am right now.

So we're coming to the end of this . . . two more chapters then we're done i'd say? not sure. Thanks for sticking around guys :) !

P.S review this?

Ah also! answer now Lucas?


	25. Chapter 25

I don't know how long I would have lain there watching the last vestiges of colored light drain into the shadows on the wooden floor, singing Don't Let Me Go by Raign if Robbie and Sinjin hadn't come for me.

I dimly heard the sound of Sinjin's key in the lock, but it seemed to come from a long way away. I thought for a moment that it was an echo of the key turning in the iron bracelet on Jade's wrist and I reached out my hand into the shadows to stay her hand.

"She might still be here," I explained to them when they found me creeping along the wall. "In the shadows."

Robbie waved his hand through the shadows to show me there was nothing there. Sinjin turned on the over light. The shadows scurried into the corners.

I screamed at him to turn it off.

I screamed again when Robbie tried to carry me to my room upstairs.

"Not there," I begged. "I can't sleep in that bed."

They put me in the back bedroom on the first floor. Jade had never gone there, not even the one time I asked her to fetch an extra sheet in there. Now I knew why.

The room was filled with the smell of iron from the iron bed frame. I felt the cold of it on my wrist where Jade's fingerprints were seared into my skin-five ice splinters lodged in my flesh. After they put me in bed, bandaged my arm and spooned some bitter tasting tea down my throat I heard them whispering in the kitchen.

"I'm afraid the shadows got under her skin," Robbie said.

"Will it spread?" SInjin asked.

"There's no way of telling," he answered. "We'll have to watch her."

So that was the _creeping_ I felt under my skin, like a drug moving through my veins. I drifted off then into the darkness beneath my eyelids. I could feel it rushing up to drown me, pull me under.

When I was little my parents had taken me to a beach out in Montauk and I'd been pulled under by a wave, tossed and tumbled like a sock in the washing machine until I couldn't tell which way was up.

The darkness I went into now was like that, just deeper than the ocean.

Was Jade somewhere in this darkness, waiting to drown me for sending her away? I swam deeper and deeper, passing the phosphorescent faces of drowned swimmers – half-eaten faces with crabs crawling out of eye sockets and eels wriggling where their tongues used to be – but no Jade.

Then when I surfaced into the room. Sinjin was there, trying to get me to drink some tea or broth.

Liz Book came and told me that everyone who had been sick was getting better now, proof that Jade had been making them sick.

The shadows blamed me. I could hear them whispering.

_You brought her to life_, they whispered. _You are a thing of darkness. That's where you belong. With us._

"No," I whimpered back, but I was already sinking back under the black water beneath my eyelids, where the rotting corpses of the drowned waited to embrace me.

_We're you're demon lovers now_, they whispered.

I gave myself to them, glad to feel the pull.

Once, though, instead of slipping into the dark I found myself standing in a green meadow, the dew on each blade of grass new-touched by the rising sun. Ahead of me, where the sun had not yet penetrated the mist, was a young woman, her slim legs rising out of the mist like reeds rising out of water. She turned to me, her face blurred in the mist, but then the rising sun reached her and drew Jade's face on the white mist.

She held her arms open for me and I ran into her embrace. For a moment I felt the strength of her arms encircling me and the heat of her lips on mine, but then she was gone, vanished into the mist.

I woke up, grasping the knotted bed sheets and weeping.

I got up out of bed for the first time and ran out into the backyard, my bare feet sinking into the melting slush. The yard and woods beyond were filled with a white mist rising off the ground.

Jade was out there in the woods, I knew now, not in the darkness, but wandering somewhere in the Borderlands. I would have run into the woods, but Robbie caught me and dragged me back. I wasn't strong enough to put up much of a fight. I'd have to wait until I got my strength back.

I began drinking the tea and nibbling on Diana's baked goods. I could see that the iron bed made Diana uncomfortable, so I asked to sit in the living room with her . . . once I was in the living room I had more visitors. Soheila came and brought almond and rosewater cookies. I was glad she came because I had questions for her.

"Jade told me that if I loved her, she would become human," I told her after Diana left. "Was that true?"

Soheila exhaled a long breath – a sigh that sounded a little like an owl's song – that reminded me she had once been made of wind. "Yes, that part was true. That is how I became as I am now – not quite human, but not quite all succubus. But what she didn't tell you is that loving her would drain the life out of you the way it drained Angus. I didn't know that I was killing him until it was too late, but Ja-the succubus knows what happened to Angus. She was there. She finished him off. So if she really loved you she wouldn't ask you to sacrifice your life for her."

I thought about that for a moment.

"But she took the key from me and turned the lock on the bracelet on her own hand. She turned it _right_. If she had turned it left she would have freed herself." _Or I would have been sucked into the shadows with her_, I thought, but didn't say. I was too embarrassed to admit that I'd been ready to destroy myself. "Why did she do that?"

"I don't know," Soheila said, she looked uncomfortable suddenly. "Perhaps she made a mistake. Most of my kind have a poor sense of direction."

I frowned. "But you're descended from wind spirits . . ."

"Do you think the wind knows which way it's blowing." She demanded, her eyes flashing. "Or cares what tree it blows down? Or what destruction it leaves in its wake?"

I looked away.

"Trust me, Tori, you're lucky to have escaped from her whole. Look at what she did to those students. Could you love a creature who fed off children?"

"Who's feeding off children?" the voice came from the foyer. Andre, followed by a flustered Sinjin, came into the room. "I'm pretty sure that's been outlawed."

"I thought you'd gone to the city for the break." Soheila smiled nervously.

"I had, but then I heard about an outbreak of child cannibalism and came hurrying back. What's wrong Vega? You look like someone sucker-punched you in the gut."

"Poor Tori," Sinjin answered in a loud stage whisper for me. "Jade West left the town without any explanation."

"Really?" Andre asked, cocking his head at me. "I would have never pegged her out to be the bang and ditch type."

"Andre, that's unkind!" Soheila scolded. "It's been a shock to Tori."

"I'm right here," I pointed out, tired of people talking about me as if I were_ invalid_. Maybe I was getting a little tired of being an invalid.

"Yes you are," Andre said, beaming at me. "I'm glad you didn't track her down and abscond to wherever she is. You're better off without her, Vega. You're worth a dozen Creepy Girls"

"Yes, that's exactly right," Soheila said, looking back and forth between Andre and me with curiosity. Getting to her feet, she said, "I have other houses to visit." She smiled a bit to brightly and then asked Sinjin to run over to Diana's for a few minutes with her. Andre watched her go with a puzzled expression on his face.

"I can never figure her out. She runs hot and cold like a broken faucet. What is she?"

"You don't know?" I asked.

"No. my bosses think she's an ancient divinity of sorts, but her exact designation has been carefully veiled. It's one reason I'm investigating Fairwick. Supernatural beings should be clearly labeled so you know what you're dealing with. Look what happens when you're not. What did Jade turn out to be? A vampire? A werewolf? She always looked a little vampire like."

"A succubus," I answered, embarrassed, but at least I could distract her from asking more questions about Soheila.

"Oooooh, a succubus, that's rough. No wonder you looked so tired all the time. And her students . . . ouch! That must hurt."

"If you came here to gloat . . ."

"No, but you not fighting back? Does that mean you're giving up on life?" he asked, leaning forward and squinting at me. "That doesn't sound like you."

I shrugged. "I may have to go away for a while" I was dangerously close to tears.

"Yeah, you look like you could do with a break." He said.

I looked down and saw that I'd pulled the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my hands to hide the bruises there.

"Why don't I make coffee and we can talk some more about your plans."

Before I could object he'd gone into the kitchen. I guessed that he was giving me some time to compose myself. Which would have been great if the front door hadn't opened at the same time.

"Hello? Profess?" Alyssa's voice came haltingly from the foyer.

"In here, Alyssa," I called, then I hurriedly jumped up and ran to the door . . . if I let her in she might stay for an hour.

I stepped out onto the porch to greet her.

"Let's sit on the glider for a moment before I go back to bed. I've been cooped up inside for days."

I gestured to the porch glider and Alyssa sat down right in the middle placing her bag on her right and leaving me almost no room. Rather than crowd in with her I leaned against the porch railing.

"I heard that you were unwell . . . and that Ms. West had to leave the country suddenly. I thought you must be sad."

The idea of being pitied – by Alyssa of all people – was almost too much for me. A sharp pain twinged behind my right eye. I raised my hand to massage my temple.

"That's sweet of you, but really I'm quite all right . . ."

Alyssa wasn't listening. Her eyes were fastened on my wrist, where my sleeve had fallen back from the black bruises Jade had left. She was on her feet, inches from me, her hand on my wrist. I shrunk away from her touch but the porch railing cut into my back.

"Did she do this?" she asked, her voice a low hiss, her breath hot and copper-tinged in my face.

"It's nothing, Alyssa; it was an accident."

She shook her head, her eyes still glued to my wrist. One by one she placed her fingertips over the marks Jade had left. The pads of her fingers were damp and strangely spongy and clung to the skin like suction cups.

"No," she said, the tip of her tongue appearing between her teeth. "This was no accident. She was trying to pull you into the Borderlands with her. And you . . ." she looked up. Her eyes had turned a strange sulfurous yellow. They looked oddly familiar. "You were ready to go with her. Such devotion! I can still smell it!" she sniffed and then to my utter horror and disgust her pink leathery tongue darted out of her mouth an impossible distance and licked my wrist.

I screamed and tried to push her away, but it was like pushing against foam rubber. My left hand sunk into spongy flesh. She was lifting my hand to her mouth, which was gaping wider and wider, her lips opening like rubbery flaps, revealing a second row of sharp teeth behind the first row. Black feathers were sprouting from her skin. Her tongue was covered with suction cups that latched onto my skin and started to pull.

"What are you?" I cried, but already I recognized her.

The great black crow that had tried to attack me. This was its true face: a feathered monstrosity that sucked the life force out of its victims . . . just as it had fed on Nicky and Flonia and Liz Book.

I had to get away from it before it sucked me dry. Already I could feel the life draining out of me. I couldn't push against it, so instead I braced my feet on the lower porch railing, hoisted my hips up onto the upper railing, and tipped myself backwards. I fell six feet onto my back. As it was the fall knocked the wind out of me.

Above me Alyssa was preparing to swoop down on me. I rolled to the side just before she landed. I scrambled to my feet and pushed off the ground, my fingers grabbing handfuls of sand as I came up . . . and something else. A stone with a hole in it. The fairy stone!

I wondered if there was a way I could use it against her. I didn't have much time to ponder the idea though. I could hear her behind me so I clumsily started running trying to remember the spell for attacking creatures.

I could see the inn across the road, but if I ran there she would attack me like a vulture in the middle of the open road. To my right stood the line of pine trees at the edge of the woods. If I made it in there she'd follow me, but it wouldn't be easy for her to fly.

My decision made, I flung myself to the right, in between the trees and started running. I couldn't out run her forever though . . . but maybe I could lead her to the thicket of honeysuckle and trap her in the Borderlands. I was a doorkeeper . . . with a fairy stone in my pocket. It might be my only chance to escape her.

But first had to find the door.

* * *

When I reached the arched doorway Jade had showed me, instead of being filled with the moon, it was filled with a milky blue-green mist – the color of sea glass. I stepped toward it . . . and heard a corresponding step behind me.

I wheeled around and found myself facing the creature.

"Alyssa," I said, willing my voice to be steady. "This world isn't the right place for you. Wouldn't you rather go back?"

"What do you know?" she croaked. "We are starving in that world. There is nothing there to eat. Here . . ." The awful tongue sneaked out of her mouth and writhed over her beaky lips as she took a step towards me. "These young people take drugs that deplete their life force. They drive in their fast cars half blind from alcohol. They have sex for entertainment and stay up all night pretending to study. Why shouldn't I drink of their life force when they treat their lives so cheaply?"

"They're not all like that," I said, taking a step back toward the door. "And I'm certainly not like that. I don't take drugs or drive drunk . . ."

"Ha! You're the worst of all! You were willing to let that succubus suck you dry. You were even willing to go with her. Those marks were made because your flesh was dissolving with hers – and that could only happen if you were willing to go with her. I'll tell you what. After I suck you dry I'll leave what's left of you in the Borderlands. You can spend eternity in that hellhole with your girlfriend."

"Is it really that bad there?" I asked, turning slightly to look behind me through the door. The minute I turned Alyssa launched herself at me. I drew my hand out of my pocket, slipping the fairy stone onto my finger and shouted the opening spell.

A cold wind rushed through the arched doorway and shadows stretched out towards me. Was_ she_ there? I wondered, leaning toward the door, but then I heard the flap of wings. I dodged and just as she was about to go threw the door something flashed past me and crumpled Alyssa to the floor.

Confused, I looked around and found Andre standing over her body.

"Jesus, what are you doing here?"

"Trying to save your life Vega. You're welcome." He stepped over the body, reaching for me, but Alyssa struck him square in the ballsack and threw him back against a tree. Then she launched herself at me.

I didn't have time to dodge this time. She landed on me inches from the open door. Drops of putrid saliva fell on my face. I closed my eyes and prayed that it would be over soon.

The pressure of the creature's weight lifted so suddenly that I felt lightness in my chest. Was this what death felt like? I opened my eyes and saw Alyssa hovering in the air above me. She was wrapped up in a tangled skein of shadows . . . and then she was spinning toward the door. I rolled over just in time to see her crash through the door. The shadow hovered on the threshold, coiling back.

"Close it!" Andre was next to me screaming in my ear. I looked down at the fairy stone on my hand . . . and pulled it off.

A wind blew threw the door, sucking all the air through the door. Andre grabbed me and held on to a tree trunk to keep us from being sucked through.

The coil of shadow that had banished Alyssa writhed in the air and then took shape. For a moment I saw Jade's face hovering above me. I felt a brush of lips against mine, caught the scent of honeysuckle in the air . . . and then the shadow melted and, with a loud crack and sucking whoosh, the door slammed shut.

* * *

**AN: Just got home from work and it's around 4am . . . I am drained. Why are people always buying the bartender drinks? and i always seem mean when I refuse the drink . . . I'm just not up for getting drunk to be honest. And then there is someone from college that is like "Hey you! can I get a free drink?!" like bitch I gave you a cigarette once and borrowed your lighter, I don't know you well enough to just give you free drinks, any way I kissed a guy . . . with a beard . . . not jesus beard but like stubble and can I just say Eww . . . Never again, kissing girls are way better! I can still feel it on my face ! meh . . . anyway that's enough from me.**

**Question: who would give themselves up to the darkness for "love" ?**


	26. Chapter 26 The END

Everyone looked at me strangely for the rest of the next few days.

I think they were afraid I was in shock and would soon lapse into the depression I'd wallowed in after I'd banished Jade. When I told Liz and Diana what had happened they both looked guilty.

"So it wasn't Jade who was feeding on the students," Diana said. "Or Liz."

I should have realized that I was always more tired after Alyssa had been with me," Liz said. "I should have realized what she was."

Soheila especially felt bad that she'd failed to recognize Alyssa.

"What exactly was she?" I asked when I paid a visit to her office after the break.

"A liderc," she told me, taking down the **Demonology** book from the shelf and opening it to an illustration of chicken with a woman's head. "It's a sort of Hungarian succubus, distantly related to us lilitu. They shape shift into birds in order to hunt their prey and then feed on the life force of their victims through close contact. Not through sex, as a rule"

"Well, that's a relief." I hadn't liked the idea of Alyssa having sex with her victims. "So she could have been the one making me weak, not Jade."

"That could be, but the fact remains that Jade was a succubus and you were having sex with her. Sooner or later she would have drained you."

_How much later?_ I wondered, but didn't ask aloud. I knew they were all afraid I'd have some breakdown if I thought that I banished Jade for nothing. But I wasn't going to have a breakdown.

As the days went by I subjected Honeysuckle House to an orgy of cleaning. I packed up all Jade's things and sorted them in the attic.

I found a key that fit the locked drawer, inside was another key – an iron key identical to the one Robbie had made for me to send Jade away.

So she's been sent there before – and then released.

I wondered why and when.

While cleaning I dislodged a shadowy lump and quickly recognized it as the shadow crab.

I poured a bucket of bleach over it and it shriveled up into a grey film.

Then I ran upstairs and found Ralph sitting up in his basket, cleaning himself.

"You're back!" I ran down and got a whole mini Bonbel for him to eat. While I was gone he found his way onto my laptop and typed, _Is the succubus gone?_

So Ralph had known all along. And he knew how to type!

I told him the whole story while he ate. Then he typed a single word on the screen.

_Sorry!_

I rubbed his little belly. "It's okay, fellow, at least I've got you back. I don't suppose you would have liked sharing the house with a succubus." But Ralph was already asleep.

I'd taken over the creative writing class, so I had plenty to keep me busy. I was afraid they'd spend all their time bemoaning Jade's absence, but the first time Wilder mentioned Jade's name, Nicky shot him an icy glare and no one ever brought her up again. Still, I saw Jade's influence on their writing. She had given them the confidence to experiment and find their own voices.

* * *

As I drove I past the antiques store where Jade had bought my ring I almost drove off the side of the road.

Wouldn't it be better to get far away from all reminders of her, away from temptation to go out into the woods, to the threshold between worlds, and release her? And wouldn't it be better to teach at a college that didn't attract life-sucking creatures? Adelaide was right; it was irresponsible of the college to just let anyone join.

So I decided that if my grandmother asked me to leave the college, I would.

Having made my decision I popped in an audio book of the new Charlaine Harris novel and didn't think of anything but Sookie Stackhouse's troubles until I reached Manhattan. (At least I hadn't fallen for a vampire! I congratulated myself, realizing that it had been four months since I'd made my deal with Anton Volkov and he'd never bothered me once. ) When I arrived at the hotel, I looked at my reflection – was the person who looked like a drowning victim, really me? When had that happened? And when was the last time I looked at myself in the mirror?

I looked at my watch and saw that I had a few hours before I was due to meet Adelaide. Then I called my old hairstylist and asked if there were any way she could fit me in even though I knew that she was already booked solid for months in advance.

"Oh," she said, "but someone just called to make you an appointment. A Miss Adelaide. I told her there was no openings, but she left word to call you if there were any cancellations and we just had one . . . I was just about to call."

I could hear the confusion in her voice – a common side effect of talking to Adelaide. I bristle at the idea of my grandmother arranging my life – how did she know I needed a haircut? – But what was the point of acting proud and looking horrible?

"What time is the appointment?" I asked.

"In half an hour," she told me

"I'll be there," I told her.

Two and a half hours later I was back at the Grove. I had just enough time to slip into the lilac Jil Sander sheath and Christian Louboutin pumps I'd bought and freshen up my make-up before joining Adelaide in the library – or rather just enough time to be five minutes late so I didn't feel as if I were hopping to Adelaide's orders.

Adelaide defeated that little rebellion by arriving exactly six minutes late and found me gawking at the three stories of bookshelves that lined the library walls.

"I was unavoidably detained by the initiation committee," she told me, presenting her cheek for me to kiss. "The new generation can't make any decisions for themselves."

Out of habit I touched my lips to her cool cheek before remembering I'd promised myself not to.

"Have you been ill?" she asked, pouring tea into my cup. "You look like you should be a character in a Tim Burton movie."

"I had a . . . bug," I said, taking a sip of the strong smoky tea. "But I'm fine now. And there's something I need to discuss . . ."

"I do hope you're taking care of yourself up there," she continued as if she hadn't heard my reply. "I hear you had a run in with something there."

I wondered if she meant Jade or Alyssa – and I also wondered whom her informant was – but I wasn't about to take the bait.

"I'm hear to talk about the curse you put on the Ballard family that keeps them from achieving anything . . ."

"Good girl," Adelaide smiled, "how long did it take you to figure that out? It's not up to me to remove the curse. Only the youngest of the family can do that."

"You mean I could remove the curse?"

"Only if you accept your rightful place here at the Grove."

"You want me to join the Grove?"

Adelaide laughed, "You needn't make it sound like I'm asking you to join the Mafia!"

"I wouldn't have to do anything harmful to join – like sacrifice anyone?"

"We haven't even sacrificed animals since the eighteenth century."

"Good to know," I said. "But what exactly would my membership obligations entail?"

"You have to attend quarterly Council meetings on Samhain, Winter Solstice, Beltane and Summer Solstice which will be held this year in Fairwick so it'll be convenient for you. Oh . . . and you do have to perform some community service."

"What kind of community service?" I asked suspiciously. I had a feeling it wasn't going to be visiting nursing homes or reading to the blind.

"I'd like you to be the Grove's confidential intelligence provider at Fairwick College."

"You mean a spy."

"Call it what you like. You've seen how dangerous it is with the college's proximity to the door to Faerie."

"Don't you already have spies there?"

"Yes, but we're no longer sure how reliable that intelligence is. Agents tend to go . . . _native_ at Fairwick. I think you'll provide an honest report of what happens at Fairwick."

"I couldn't allow anyone to come to harm because of my say-so."

"No one would come to harm who hadn't harmed a human. You'll find we're fair at the Grove. So what do you say?"

I considered. I hated the idea on spying on my friends, but I hated more the prospect of Nicky falling victim and becoming like her mother. Besides, Adelaide had a point. Things were out of control at Fairwick. If my decision was at all swayed by the fact that now I'd get to stay at Fairwick close to where Jade still lingered, well, I couldn't help that, could I?

"Okay," I said, "I'll do it. As long as you promise to tell me how to lift the curse."

"Certainly. I just need you to lay your hand on this book and repeat after me."

"I hereby avow that I, Victoria Vega, will abide to the rules and regulations of the Grove. In exchange I will be given the secret of the Ballard curse."

I repeated the words. And a spark flew on my wrist. I drew my hand away and batted at the burning cinder but it had already sunk into my skin, leaving a mark in the shape of a tree.

"Hey, you didn't tell me it would leave a mark?"

"It'll fade," she said dismissively. "But its power won't. Now come. The council is waiting."

My life was going to be very complicated. When I opened the door to my room I realized just how complicated. Sitting in the blue moiré chair by the window, sipping a glass of champagne, was Anton.

I opened my mouth to scream, but then closed it. Who would come to my aid here at the Grove? Then I noticed he was wearing a tie clip embossed with the insignia of the Grove.

"You're a member?" I asked coming into the room. "but I thought that they don't admit supernatural creatures?"

"They don't admit fairies and demons, but I'm not a member. I'm merely an associate."

"You're the informant!" I said, sinking down onto the foot of the bed.

"I prefer to think of myself as a _liaison_ between the Grove and Fairwick."

"Uh huh. Then what are you doing here? Have you come to collect on our deal?" I asked. I realized then that I wanted to live, and not be drained of my blood. Whatever despair and nihilism that had come over me after I'd banished Jade, it was gone.

"Look," I said, "you told me you wouldn't do anything I didn't agree to and I don't want to . . . get bitten . . . or become a vampire."

Anton smiled and leaned forward in his chair. He touched one finger to my throat, just below my ear and traced a line to my collarbone. I shivered.

"Pity . . . but that's not what I was going to ask for. We nocturnals of Fairwick, want a spokesperson at the Grove. An ally who will attest to our 'good behavior.' That we only drink from adults, willing non-glamoured volunteers and that we're not turning anyone into vampires."

"But if you_ are_ obeying all those rules, why do you need to make a special deal with me to report the truth?"

"Let's just say that an extra word in our favor from a doorkeeper might come in handy in the future."

He got to his feet and extended his hand. "What do you say? Do we have a deal?"

I took his hand, which was icy to the touch. I considered whether this was something I desired. And then I realized how much it would piss off my grandmother.

"Yes," I told him. "We've got a deal."

* * *

Driving back to Fairwick the next day in the pouring rain, I thought about all the secrets I'd have to keep. For a girl who'd always valued the truth I'd be telling a lot of lies.

But at least I got to tell one truth. All I had to do break the Ballard curse was speak one sentence to Nicky and mean it.

_I forgive the pain your family gave to my family and release you from the pain we've given you._

Pretty simple. Nicky would probably think I'd gone off my rocker when I said it.

I pulled up in front of Honeysuckle House, thinking about the power of forgiveness and the pain we unknowingly cause others. In my head I heard the last question Jade had asked me.

_Is a lie really the worst thing if it's told out of love?_

I looked at my house for a few moments before getting out of the car. This was my home now – for better or worse. I'd found my way back and somehow, against all odds, I'd landed on my feet.

I got out, but instead of going inside I cut across the lawn and walked through a gap in the tress onto the path. The ground was damp from rain. I followed the trail to the glade in the middle of the honeysuckle thicket. The twisted branches were stained dark by the rain. Against the new trembling green they looked like stained glass windows.

Like a cathedral . . .

_I turned from my earthly lover and watched my demon lover rise in the mist beyond the trees. I could see longing in her face, a longing matched in my own sinews and veins. If she called to me, I would follow. But she didn't call to me. She lifted a hand – in parting or benediction I'd never know – and then she vanished into the shadows from which she came._

A fine mist rose from the ground, filling the arched doorway. I stepped closer and the mist parted for me, curled around me, and caressed my face. I felt it linger on the iron key I wore around my neck. I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of sea air and honeysuckle.

"No," I said, answering the last question Jade had asked me. "A lie told out of love isn't the worst thing."

Then my face damp from the mist, I turned around and went home.

* * *

**AN: And that's the end of this story :) thanks guys for sticking around. I loved the last bit.**


	27. sequel

AN:Hey guys so I put up a sequel ... Because you guys are all about happy endings . It's called Dive In If You Dare... so check it out.x


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